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THE 


BOOK    OF    ISAIAH 


GEORGE     ADAM     SMITH,     M.A., 

Minister  o/  Queen's  Cross  Church,  Aberdeen. 


IN   TWO   VOLUMES. 

VOL.    II.— ISAIAH    XL.— LXVI. 

WITH  A   SKETCH  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  ISRAEL  FROM  ISAIAH 
TO   THE  EXILE. 


1Flew  l^orft: 
A.  C.  ARMSTRONG  &  SON, 

714  BROADWAY. 


CONTENTS.  . 

PAGE 

Table  of  Dates   ,       • viii 

Introduction ,       .       .      ix 

BOOK    I. 

THE    EXILE. 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.   THE  DATE   OF  ISAIAH  XL.— LXVI.         ...  3 

II.   FROM  ISAIAH  TO   THE   FALL  OF  JERUSALEM       .        26 

701-587   B.C. 

III.  WHAT  ISRAEL  TOOK  INTO   EXILE  .  .        36 

IV.  ISRAEL  IN   EXILE .48 

From  597  till  about  550  3,c, 

BOOK    II. 

THE    LORD'S    DELIVERANCE. 

V.  THE   PROLOGUE:   THE   FOUR   HERALD   VOICES    .        71 
Isaiah  xl.  i-ii. 


VI.   GOD:   A  SACRAMENT     .  .  .  • 

Isaiah  xl.  12-31. 

VII.   GOD  :  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY 
Isaiah  xli. 


87 
106 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP.  PAGE 

VIII.   THE  PASSION   OF   GOD 132 

Isaiah  xlii.  13-17. 

IX.    FOUR  POINTS  OF  A  TRUE   RELIGION  .  .  .143 

Isaiah  xliii.-xlviii. 

X.    CYRUS 162 

Isaiah  xli.  2,  25  ;  xliv.  28-xlv.  13;  xlvi.  11 ;  xlviii.  14,  15. 

XI.    BEARING  OR   BORNE IJJ 

Isaiah  xlvi. 

XII.   BABYLON 189 

Isaiah  xlvii. 

XIIL    THE   CALL  TO   GO   FORTH 205 

Isaiah  xlviii. 

XIV.   THE      RIGHTEOUSNESS     OF     ISRAEL     AND      THE 

RIGHTEOUSNESS   OF   GOD    ...  .  .      214 

Isaiah  xl.-lxvi. 

BOOK    III. 

THE    SERVANT    OF    THE    LORD. 

XV.    ONE   GOD,    ONE   PEOPLE 236 

Isaiah  xli.  8-20,  xlii.-xliii. 

XVI.    THE    SERVANT    OF    THE    LORD      .  .  .  .252 

Isaiah  xli.  8-20;   xlii.  1-7,   18  ff . ;    xliii.  5-10;   xlix.   1-9; 
I.  4-11 ;  lii.  13-liii. 

XVII.    THE     SERVANT     OF     THE     LORD     IN     THE    NEW 

TESTAMENT 278 

XVIII.    THE   SERVICE   OF  GOD  AND  MAN  .  .  .      29O 

Isaiah  xlii.  1-7. 

XIX.    PROPHET  AND   MARTYR 313 

Isaiah  xlix.  1-9  ;  1.  4-11. 

XX.   THE   SUFFERING  SERVANT  ....  336 

Isaiah  lii.  13-liii. 


CONTENTS. 


BOOK    IV. 
THE    RESTORATION. 

CHAP,  PAGB 

XXI.   DOUBTS  IN  THE   WAY 381 

Isaiah  xlix.-lii.  12. 

XXII.    ON  THE  EVE   OF  RETURN     ,  .  ,  ,  ,      397 

Isaiah  liv.-lvi.  8. 

XXIII,  THE   REKINDLING  OF  THE   CIVIC   CONSCIENCE   .      408 

Isaiah  Ivi,  9-Iix. 

XXIV.  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT 428 

Isaiah  Ix.-lxiii,  7. 

XXV.   A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND   THE  JUDGEMENT    .      445 
Isaiah  Ixiii.  7-lxvi. 

INDEX  OF  Chapters 469 

Index  of  Subjects 471 


INTRODUCTION. 

THIS  volume  upon  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  carries  on  the 
exposition  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  from  the  point 
reached  by  the  -author's  previous  volume  in  the  same 
series.  But  as  it  accepts  these  twenty-seven  chapters, 
upon  their  own  testimony,  as  a  separate  prophecy  from 
a  century  and  a  half  later  than  Isaiah  himself,  in  a 
style  and  on  subjects  not  altogether  the  same  as  his, 
and  as  it  accordingly  pursues  a  somewhat  different 
method  of  exposition  from  the  previous  volume,  a  few 
words  of  introduction  are  again  necessary. 

The  greater  part  of  Isaiah  i.-xxxix.  was  addressed 
to  a  nation  upon  their  own  soil, — with  their  temple, 
their  king,  their  statesmen,  their  tribunals  and  their 
markets, — responsible  for  the  discharge  of  justice  and 
social  reform,  for  the  conduct  of  foreign  policies  and 
the  defence  of  the  fatherland.  But  chs.  xl.-lxvi.  came 
to  a  people  wholly  in  exile,  and  partly  in  servitude, 
with  no  civic  life  and  few  social  responsibilities :  a 
people  in  the  passive  state,  with  occasion  for  the  exer- 
cise of  almost  no  qualities  save  those  of  penitence 
and  patience,  of  memory  and  hope.  This  difference 
between  the  two  parts  of  the  Book  is  summed  up  in 
their  respective  uses  of  the  word  Righteousness.  In 
Isaiah  i.-xxxix.,  or  at  least  in  such  of  these  chapters  as 
refer  to  Isaiah's  own  day,  righteousness  is  man's  moral 
and  religious  duty,  in  its  contents  of  piety,  purity,  justice 


INTRODUCTION. 


and  social  service.  In  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  righteousness 
(except  in  a  very  few  cases)  is  something  which  the 
people  expect  from  God — their  historical  vindication  by 
His  restoral  and  reinstatement  of  them  as  His  people. 

It  is,  therefore,  evident  that  what  rendered  Isaiah's 
own  prophecies  of  so  much  charm  and  of  so  much 
meaning  to  the  modern  conscience — their  treatment  of 
those  political  and  social  questions  which  we  have 
always  with  us — cannot  form  the  chief  interest  of 
chapters  xl.-lxvi.  But  the  empty  place  is  taken  by  a 
series  of  historical  and  religious  questions  of  supreme 
importance.  Into  the  vacuum  created  in  Israel's  life 
by  the  Exile,  there  comes  rushing  the  meaning  of  the 
nation's  whole  history — all  the  conscience  of  their  past, 
all  the  destiny  with  which  their  future  is  charged.  It 
is  not  with  the  fortunes  and  duties  of  a  single  genera- 
tion that  this  great  prophecy  has  to  do :  it  is  with  a 
people  in  their  entire  significance  and  promise.  The 
standpoint  of  the  prophet  may  be  the  Exile,  but 
his  vision  ranges  from  Abraham  to  Christ.  Besides 
the  business  of  the  hour, — the  deliverance  of  Israel 
from  Babylon, — the  prophet  addresses  himself  to 
these  questions :  What  is  Israel  ?  What  is  Israel's 
God  ?  How  is  Jehovah  different  from  other  gods  ? 
How  is  Israel  different  from  other  peoples  ?  He 
recalls  the  making  of  the  nation,  God's  treatment  of 
them  from  the  beginning,  all  that  they  and  Jehovah 
have  been  to  each  other  and  to  the  world,  and  espe- 
cially the  meaning  of  this  latest  judgement  of  Exile. 
But  the  instruction  and  the  impetus  of  that  marvellous 
past  he  uses  in  order  to  interpret  and  proclaim  the 
still  more  glorious  future, — the  ideal,  which  God  has 
set  before  His  people,  and  in  the  realisation  of  which 
their   history    shall   culminate.      It    is    here   that    the 


INTRODUCTION. 


Spirit  of  God  lifts  the  prophet  to  the  highest  station 
in  prophecy — to  the  richest  consciousness  of  spiritual 
religion — to  the  clearest  vision  of  Christ. 

Accordingly,  to  expound  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  is  really  to 
write  the  religious  history  of  Israel.  A  prophet  whose 
vision  includes  both  Abraham  and  Christ,  whose  subject 
is  the  whole  meaning  and  promise  of  Israel,  cannot  be 
adequately  interpreted  within  the  limits  of  his  own  text 
or  of  his  own  time.  Excursions  are  necessary  both 
to  the  history  that  is  behind  him,  and  to  the  history 
that  is  still  in  front  of  him.  This  is  the  reason  of  the 
appearance  in  this  volume  of  chapters  whose  titles  seem 
at  first  beyond  its  scope — such  as  From  Isaiah  to  the 
Fall  of  Jerusalem :  What  Israel  took  into  Exile :  One 
God,  One  People :  The  Servant  of  the  Lord  in  the  New 
Testament.  Moreover,  much  of  this  historical  matter 
has  an  interest  that  is  only  historical.  If  in  Isaiah's 
own  prophecies  it  is  his  generation's  likeness  to  our- 
selves, which  appeals  to  our  conscience,  in  chs.  xl.-lxvi. 
of  the  Book  called  by  his  name  it  is  Israel's  unique 
meaning  and  office  for  God  in  the  world,  which  we 
have  to  study.  We  are  called  to  follow  an  experience 
and  a  discipline  unshared  by  any  other  generation 
of  men ;  and  to  interest  ourselves  in  matters  that  then 
happened  once  for  all,  such  as  the  victory  of  the  One 
God  over  the  idols,  or  His  choice  of  a  single  people 
through  whom  to  reveal  Himself  to  the  world.  We 
are  called  to  watch  work,  which  that  representative 
and  priestly  people  did  for  humanity,  rather  than,  as  in 
Isaiah's  own  prophecies,  work  which  has  to  be  repeated 
by  each  new  generation  in  its  turn,  and  to-day  also  by 
ourselves.  This  is  the  reason  why  in  an  exposition  of 
Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.,  like  the  present  volume,  there  should 
be  a  good  deal  more  of  historical  recital,  and  a  good 


INTRODUCTION. 


deal  less  of  practical  application,  than  in  the  exposition 
of  Isaiah  i.-xxxix. 

At  the  same  time  we  must  not  suppose  that  there  is 
not  very  much  in  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  with  which  to  stir  our 
own  consciences  and  instruct  our  own  lives.  For,  to 
mention  no  more,  there  is  that  sense  of  sin  with  which 
Israel  entered  exile,  and  which  has  made  he  literature 
of  Israel's  Exile  the  confessional  of  the  world  ;  there 
is  that  great  unexhausted  programme  of  the  Service 
of  God  and  Man,  which  our  prophet  lays  down  as 
Israel's  duty  and  example  to  humanity ;  and  there  is 
that  prophecy  of  the  virtue  and  glory  of  vicarious 
suffering  for  sin,  which  is  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ 
and  His  Cross. 

I  have  found  it  necessary  to  devote  more  space 
to  critical  questions  than  in  the  previous  volume. 
Chs.  xl.-lxv  .  approach  more  nearly  to  a  unity  than 
chs.  i.-xxxix. :  with  very  few  exceptions  they  lie  in 
chronological  order.  But  they  are  not  nearly  so  clearly 
divided  and  grouped :  their  connection  cannot  be  so 
briefly  or  so  lucidly  explained.  The  form  of  the  prophecy 
is  dramatic,  but  the  scenes  and  the  speakers  are  not 
definitely  marked  off.  In  spite  of  the  chronological 
advance,  which  we  shall  be  able  to  trace,  there  are  no 
clear  stages — not  even,  as  we  shall  see,  at  those  points 
at  which  most  expositors  divide  the  prophecy,  the  end 
of  ch.  xHx.  and  of  ch.  Iviii.  The  prophet  pursues 
simultaneously  several  lines  of  thought ;  and  though 
the  close  of  some  of  these  and  the  rise  of  others  may 
be  marked  to  a  verse,  his  frequent  passages  from 
one  to  another  are  often  almost  imperceptible.  He 
everywhere  requires  a  more  continuous  translation,  a 
closer  and  more  elaborate  exegesis,  than  were  necessary 
for  Isaiah  i.-xxxix. 


INTRODUCTION. 


In  order  to  effect  some  general  arrangement  and 
division  of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  it  is  necessary  to  keep  in 
view  that  the  immediate  problem  which  the  prophet 
had  before  him  was  twofold.  It  was  political,  and  it 
was  spiritual.  There  was,  first  of  all,  the  deliverance 
of  Israel  from  Babylon,  according  to  the  ancient 
promises  of  Jehovah :  to  this  were  attached  such 
questions  as  Jehovah's  omnipotence,  faithfulness  and 
grace ;  the  meaning  of  Cyrus ;  the  condition  of  the 
Babylonian  Empire.  But  after  their  political  deliver- 
ance from  Babylon  was  assured,  there  remained  the 
really  larger  problem  of  Israel's  spiritual  readiness  for 
the  freedom  and  the  destiny  to  which  God  was  to  lead 
them  through  the  opened  gates  of  their  prison-house  :  to 
this  were  attached  such  questions  as  the  original  calling 
and  mission  of  Israel;  the  mixed  and  paradoxical  charac- 
ter of  the  people ;  their  need  of  a  Servant  from  the  Lord, 
since  they  themselves  had  failed  to  be  His  Servant;  the 
coming  of  this  Servant,  his  methods  and  results. 

This  twofold  division  of  the  prophet's  problem  will 
not,  it  is  true,  strike  his  prophecy  into  separate  and 
distinct  groups  of  chapters.  He  who  attempts  such  a 
division  simply  does  not  understand  ''  Second  Isaiah." 
But  it  will  make  clear  to  us  the  different  currents  of 
the  sacred  argument,  which  flow  sometimes  through 
and  through  one  another,  and  sometimes  singly  and  in 
succession  ;  and  it  will  give  us  a  plan  for  grouping  the 
twenty-seven  chapters  very  nearly,  if  not  quite,  in  the 
order  in  which  they  lie. 

On  these  principles,  the  following  exposition  is 
divided  into  Four  Books.  The  First  is  called  The 
Exile  :  it  contains  an  argument  for  placing  the  date  of 
the  prophecy  about  550  b.c,  and  brings  the  history  ot 
Israel  down  to  that  date  from  the  time  of  Isaiah ;  it 


INTRODUCTION. 


States  the  political  and  spiritual  sides  of  the  double 
problem  to  which  the  prophecy  is  God's  answer  ;  it 
describes  what  Israel  took  with  them  into  exile,  and 
what  they  learned  and  suffered  there,  till,  after  half  a 
century,  the  herald  voices  of  our  prophecy  broke  upon 
their  waiting  ears.  The  Second  Book,  The  Lord's 
Deliverance,  discusses  the  political  redemption  from 
Babylon,  with  the  questions  attached  to  it  about  God's 
nature  and  character,  about  Cyrus  and  Babylon,  or  all 
of  chs.  xl.-xlviii.,  except  the  passages  about  the  Servant, 
which  are  easily  detached  from  the  rest,  and  refer  rather 
to  the  spiritual  side  of  Israel's  great  problem.  The 
Third  Book,  The  Servant  of  the  Lord,  expounds  all 
the  passages  on  that  subject,  both  in  chs.  xl.-xlviii.  and 
in  chs.  xlix.-liii.,  with  the  development  of  the  subject 
in  the  New  Testament,  and  its  application  to  our  life 
to-day.  The  Servant  and  his  work  are  the  solution  of 
all  the  spiritual  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  people's 
Return  and  Restoration.  To  these  latter  and  their 
practical  details  the  rest  of  the  prophecy  is  devoted; 
that  is,  all  chs.  xlix.-lxvi.,  except  the  passages  on  the 
Servant,  and  these  chapters  are  treated  in  the  Fourth 
Book  of  this  volume,  The  Restoration. 

As  much  as  possible  of  the  merely  critical  discussion 
has  been  put  in  Chapter  I.,  or  in  the  opening  para- 
graphs of  the  other  chapters,  or  in  foot-notes.  A  new 
translation  from  the  original  (except  where  a  few  verses 
have  been  taken  from  the  Revised  EngUsh  Version)  has 
been  provided  for  nearly  the  whole  prophecy.  Where 
the  rhythm  of  the  original  is  at  all  discernible,  the 
translation  has  been  made  in  it.  But  it  must  be  kept 
in  mind  that  this  reproduction  of  the  original  rhythm 
is  only  approximate,  and  that  in  it  no  attempt  has 
been  made  to  elegance  ;  its  chief  aim  being  to  make 


INTRODUCTION. 


clear  the  order  and  the  emphases  of  the  original.  The 
translation  is  almost  quite  literal. 

Having  felt  the  want  of  a  clear  account  of  the 
prophet's  use  of  his  great  key-word  Righteousness,  I 
have  inserted  for  students,  at  the  end  of  Book  II.,  a 
chapter  on  this  term.  Summaries  of  our  prophet's  use 
of  such  cardinal  terms  as  Mishpat,  R'ishonoth,  The 
Isles,  etc.,  will  be  found  in  notes.  For  want  of  space  I 
have  had  to  exclude  some  sections  on  the  Style  of 
Isaiah,  xl.-lxvi.,  on  the  Influence  of  Monotheism  on 
the  Imagination,  and  on  What  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  owes  to 
Jeremiah.  This  debt,  as  we  shall  be  able  to  trace,  is 
so  great  that  "  Second  Jeremiah  "  would  be  a  title  no 
less  proper  for  the  prophecy  than  "Second  Isaiah," 

I  had  also  wished  to  append  a  chapter  on  Com- 
mentaries on  the  Book  of  Isaiah.  No  Scripture  has 
been  so  nobly  served  by  its  commentaries.  To  begin 
with  there  was  Calvin,  and  there  is  Calvin, — still  as 
valuable  as  ever  for  his  strong  spiritual  power,  his 
sanity,  his  moderation,  his  sensitiveness  to  the  changes 
and  shades  of  the  prophet's  meaning.  After  him 
Vitringa,  Gesenius,  Hitzig,  Ewald,  Delitzsch,  all  the 
great  names  of  the  past  in  Old  Testament  criticism, 
are  connected  with  Isaiah.  In  recent  years  (besides 
Nagelsbach  in  Lange's  Bibelwerk)  we  have  had  Cheyne's 
two  volumes,  too  well  known  both  here  and  in  Germany 
to  need  more  than  mention ;  Bredenkamp's  clear  and 
concise  exposition,  the  characteristic  of  which  is  an 
attempt — not,  however,  successful — to  distinguish  au- 
thentic prophecies  of  Isaiah  in  the  disputed  chapters  ; 
Orelli's  handy  volume  (in  Strack  and  Zockler's  com- 
pendious Commentary,  and  translated  into  English  by 
Professor  Banks  in  Messrs.  Clarks'  Foreign  Theological 
Library),  from  the  conservative  side,  but  accepting,  as 


INTRODUCTION. 


Delitzsch  does  in  his  last  edition,  the  dual  authorship ; 
and  this  year  Dillmann's  great  work,  replacing  Knobel's 
in  the  *'  Kurzgefasstes  Exegetisches  Handbuch  "  series. 
I  regret  that  I  did  not  receive  Dillmann's  work  till  more 
than  half  of  this  volume  was  written.  English  students 
will  have  all  they  can  possibly  need  if  they  can  add 
Dillmann  to  DeHtzsch  and  Cheyne,  though  Calvin  and 
Ewald  must  never  be  forgotten.  Professor  Driver's 
Isaiah  :  His  Life  and  Times  is  a  complete  handbook  to 
the  prophet.  On  the  theology,  besides  the  relevant 
portions  of  Schultz's  Alt-Testamentliche  Theologie  (4th 
ed.,  1889),  and  Duhm's  Theologie  der  Propheten,  the 
student  will  find  invaluable  Professor  Robertson  Smith's 
Prophets  of  Israel  for  Isaiah  i.-xxxix.,  and  Professor 
A.  B.  Davidson's  papers  in  the  Expositor  for  1884  on  the 
theology  of  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  There  are  also  KrUger's 
able  and  lucid  Essai  sur  la  Theologie  d^Isa'ie  xL-lxvi. 
(Paris,  1882),  and  Guthe's  Das  Zukunftsbild  fesaias, 
and  Earth's  and  Giesebrecht's  respective  Beitrdge  zur 
Jesaiakritik,  the  latter  published  this  year. 

In  conclusion,  I  have  to  express  my  thanks  for 
the  very  great  assistance  which  I  have  derived  in  the 
composition  of  both  volumes  from  my  friend  the  Rev. 
Charles  Anderson  Scott,  B.A.,  who  has  sought  out 
facts,  read  nearly  all  the  proofs  and  helped  to  prepare 
the  Index. 


TABLE  OF  DATES. 

B.C. 

721.     Fall  of  Samaria.     Captivity  of  Northern  Israel. 

701.     Deliverance  of  Jerusalem  from  Sennacherib. 

696? — 641.     Reign  of  Manasseh.     Supposed  time  of  Isaiah's  death. 

630.     Josiah's  Reformation  begun. 

629  or  628,     Jeremiah  called  to  be  a  prophet. 

621.     The  Book  of  Deuteronomy  discovered. 

607.     Fall  of  Nineveh  and  Assyria.     Babylon  supreme. 


THE  EXILE. 

599 — 59^-     Siege  of  Jerusalem  by  Nebuchadrezzar.     First  Captivity 
of  the  Jews. 

594.     Ezekiel  begins  to  prophesy  in  Chaldea. 

587.     Destructionof  Jerusalem  by  Nebuchadrezzar.     Second  Captivity 
of  the  Jews. 
Flight  of  many  Jews  with  Jeremiah  to  Egypt. 

585.     Battle  of  the  Eclipse.     Triple  League :  Babylon,  Media,  Lydia. 

561.     Nebuchadrezzar  dies,     Evil-Merodach  succeeds. 

559.     Neriglissar  succeeds  Evil-Merodach. 

554.     Nabunahid  or  Nabonidos  usurps  the  throne  of  Babylon. 
Harder  times  for  the  Jews. 

549.     Fall  of  Median  monarchy  before  Cyrus. 

545.     Cyrus  attacks  Babylonia  from  the  north,  and  is  repulsed.     In- 
vades Lydia,  and  takes  Sardis  and  King  Croesus. 

538.     Cyrus  captures  Babylon. 

Permission   to    the   Jews     to   return    and    rebuild   Jerusalem. 
Zerubbabel,  Joshua. 


529.  Cjrrus  dies.     Cambyses  sole  king. 

522.  Cambyses  dies. 

521.  Babylon  revolts.     Retaken  by  Darius. 

486.  Xerxes  succeeds  Darius. 

466.  Artaxerxes  Longimanus. 

458.  Second  great  return  of  Jews.     Ezra. 

401.  Revolt  and  defeat  of  C3TUS.     The  Anabasis* 


BOOK    I. 
THE   EXILE, 


VOL.  n. 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI. 

THE  problem  of  the  date  of  Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  is 
this :  In  a  book  called  by  the  name  of  the 
prophet  Isaiah,  who  flourished  between  740  and  700 
B.C.,  the  last  twenty-seven  chapters  deal  with  the 
captivity  suffered  by  the  Jews  in  Babylonia  from  598 
to  538,  and  more  particularly  with  the  advent,  about 
550,  of  Cyrus,  whom  they  name.  Are  we  to  take  for 
granted  that  Isaiah  himself  prophetically  wrote  these 
chapters,  or  must  w^e  assign  them  to  a  nameless  author 
or  authors  of  the  period  of  which  they  treat  ? 

Till  the  end  of  last  century  it  was  the  almost  uni- 
versally accepted  tradition,  and  even  still  is  an  opinion 
retained  by  many,  that  Isaiah  was  carried  forward  by 
the  Spirit,  out  of  his  own  age  to  the  standpoint  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  later ;  that  he  was  inspired  to 
utter  the  warning  and  comfort  required  by  a  generation 
so  very  different  from  his  own,  and  was  even  enabled 
to  hail  by  name  their  redeemer,  Cyrus.  This  theory, 
involving  as  it  does  a  phenomenon  without  parallel  in 
the  history  of  Holy  Scripture,  is  based  on  these  two 
grounds  '.first,  that  the  chapters  in  question  form  a  con- 
siderable part — nearly  nine-twentieths — of  the  "Book 
of  Isaiah;"  and  second,  that  portions  of  them  are  quoted 
in  the  New  Testament  by  the  prophet's  name.     The 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


theory  is  also  supported  by  arguments  drawn  from 
resemblances  of  style  and  vocabulary  between  these 
twenty-seven  chapters  and  the  undisputed  oracles  of 
Isaiah  ;  but,  as  the  opponents  of  the  Isaian  authorship 
also  appeal  to  vocabulary  and  style,  it  will  be  better 
to  leave  this  kind  of  evidence  aside  for  the  present,  and 
to  discuss  the  problem  upon  other  and  less  ambiguous 
grounds. 

The  first  argument,  then,  for  the  Isaian  authorship 
of  chapters  xl.-lxvi.  is  that  they  form  part  of  a 
book  called  by  Isaiah's  name.  But,  to  be  worth  any- 
thing, this  argument  must  rest  on  the  following  facts : 
that  everything  in  a  book  called  by  a  prophet's  name 
is  necessarily  by  that  prophet,  and  that  the  compilers 
of  the  book  intended  to  hand  it  down  as  altogether 
from  his  pen.  Now  there  is  no  evidence  for  either  of 
these  conclusions.  On  the  contrary,  there  is  consider- 
able testimony  in  the  opposite  direction.  The  Book 
of  Isaiah  is  not  one  continuous  prophecy.  It  consists 
of  a  number  of  separate  orations,  with  a  few  intervening 
pieces  of  narrative.  Some  of  these  orations  claim  to  be 
Isaiah's  own :  they  possess  such  titles  as  The  vision  of 
Isaiah  the  son  of  Amoz.*  But  such  titles  describe  only 
the  individual  prophecies  they  head,  and  other  portions 
of  the  book,  upon  other  subjects  and  in  very  different 
styles,  do  not  possess  titles  at  all.  It  seems  to  me, 
that  those,  who  maintain  the  Isaian  authorship  of  the 
whole  book,  have  the  responsibility  cast  upon  them  of 

*  Chs.  i.,  ii.,  etc.  The  only  title  that  could  be  offered  as  covering 
the  whole  book  is  that  in  ch.  i.,  ver.  i :  The  vision  of  Isaiah  the  son 
of  Amoz,  which  he  saw  concerning  J ud ah  and  Jerusalem,  in  the  days 
of  Uzziah,  Jofham,  Ahaz,  and  Hezekiah,  kings  oj  Judah.  But  this 
manifestly  cannot  apply  to  any  but  the  earlier  chapters,  of  which 
Judah  and  Jerusalem  are  indeed  the  subjects. 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI.  5 

explaining  why  some  chapters  in  it  should  be  distinctly 
said  to  be  by  Isaiah,  while  others  should  not  be  so 
entitled.  Surely  this  difference  affords  us  sufficient 
ground  for  understanding,  that  the  whole  book  is  not 
necessarily  by  Isaiah,  nor  intentionally  handed  down 
by  its  compilers  as  the  work  of  that  prophet  * 

Now,  when  we  come  to  chs.  xl.-lxvi.,  we  find 
that,  occurring  in  a  book  which  we  have  just  seen 
no  reason  for  supposing  to  be  in  every  part  of  it  by 
Isaiah,  these  chapters  nowhere  claim  to  be  his.  They 
are  separated  from  that  portion  of  the  book,  in  which 
his  undisputed  oracles  are  placed,  by  a  historical  narra- 
tive of  considerable  length.  And  there  is  not  anywhere 
upon  them  nor  in  them  a  title  nor  other  statement  that 
they  are  by  the  prophet,  nor  any  allusion  which  could 
give  the  faintest  support  to  the  opinion,  that  they  offer 
themselves  to  posterity  as  dating  from  his  time.  It 
is  safe  to  say,  that,  if  they  had  come  to  us  by  themselves, 
no  one  would  have  dreamt  for  an  instant  of  ascribing 
them  to  Isaiah;  for  the  alleged  resemblances,  which 
their  language  and  style  bear  to  his  language  and  style, 
are  far  more  than  overborne  by  the  undoubted  differences, 
and  have  never  been  employed,  even  by  the  defenders 
of  the  Isaian  authorship,  except  in  additional  and 
confessedly  slight  support  of  their  main  argument,  viz. 
that  the  chapters  must  be  Isaiah's  because  they  are 
included  in  a  book  called  by  his  name. 

Let  us  understand,  therefore,  at  this  very  outset,  that 

*  There  are,  it  will  be  remembered,  certain  narratives  in  the  Book 
of  Isaiah,  which  are  not  by  the  prophet.  They  speak  of  him  in  the 
third  person  (chs.  vii.,  xxxvi.-xxxix.),  while  in  other  narratives 
(chs.  vi,  and  viii.)  he  speaks  of  himself  in  the  first  person.  Their 
presence  is  sufficient  proof  that  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  in  its  extant 
shape,  did  not  come  from  Isaiah's  hands,  but  was  compiled  by  others. 


THE  BOOK  Ot  ISAIAH. 


in  discussing  the  question  of  the  authorship  of  '^Second 
Isaiah,"  we  are  not  discussing  a  question,  upon  which 
the  text  itself  makes  any  statement,  or  into  which  the 
credibility  of  the  text  enters.  No  claim  is  made  by  the 
Book  of  Isaiah  itself  for  the  Isaian  authorship  of 
chs.  xl.-lxvi. 

A  second  fact  in  Scripture,  which  seems  at  first  sight 
to  make  strongly  for  the  unity  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  is 
that  in  the  New  Testament,  portions  of  the  disputed 
chapters  are  quoted  by  Isaiah's  name,  just  as  are  por- 
tions of  his  admitted  prophecies.  These  citations  are 
nine  in  number.*  None  is  by  our  Lord  Himself.  They 
occur  in  the  Gospels,  Acts  and  Paul.  Now  if  any  of 
these  quotations  were  given  in  answer  to  the  question. 
Did  Isaiah  write  chs.  xl.-lxvi.  of  the  book  called  by 
his  name  ?  or  if  the  use  of  his  name  along  with  them 
were  involved  in  the  arguments  which  they  are  borrowed 
to  illustrate  (as,  for  instance,  is  the  case  with  David's 
name  in  the  quotation  made  by  our  Lord  from  Psalm  ex.), 
then  those  who  deny  the  unity  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah 
would  be  face  to  face  with  a  very  serious  problem 
indeed.  But  in  none  of  the  nine  cases  is  the  authorship 
of  the  Book  of  Isaiah  in  question.  In  none  of  the  nine 
cases  is  there  anything  in  the  argument,  for  the  purpose 
of  which  the  quotation  has  been  made,  that  depends  on 
the  quoted  words  being  by  Isaiah.  For  the  purposes, 
for  which  the  Evangelists  and  Paul  borrow  the  texts, 
these  might  as  well  be  unnamed,  or  attributed  to  any 
other  canonical  writer.  Nothing  in  them  requires  us  to 
suppose  that  Isaiah's  name  is  mentioned  with  them  for 
any  other  end  than  that  of  reference,  viz.,  to  point  out 

*  Matt.  iii.  3,  viii.  17,  xii.  17;  Luke  iii.  4,  iv.  17;  John  i.  23, 
xii.  38  ;  Acts  viii.  28 ;  Rom.  x.  16-20. 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI. 


that  they  lie  in  the  part  of  prophecy  usually  known  by 
his  name.  But,  if  there  is  nothing  in  these  citations 
to  prove  that  Isaiah's  name  is  being  used  for  any  other 
purpose  than  that  of  reference,  then  it  is  plain — and  this 
is  all  that  we  ask  assent  to  at  the  present  time — that 
they  do  not  offer  the  authority  of  Scripture  as  a  bar  to 
our  examining  the  evidence  of  the  chapters  in  question. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  neither  is  there  any 
other  question  of  doctrine  in  our  way.  There  is  none 
about  the  nature  of  prophecy,  for,  to  take  an  example, 
ch.  liii.,  as  a  prophecy  of  Jesus  Christ,  is  surely  as 
great  a  marvel  if  you  date  it  from  the  Exile  as  if  you 
date  it  from  the  age  of  Isaiah.  And,  in  particular,  let 
us  understand  that  no  question  need  be  started  about 
the  ability  of  God's  Spirit  to  inspire  a  prophet  to 
mention  Cyrus  by  name  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
before  Cyrus  appeared.  The  question  is  not.  Could  a 
prophet  have  been  so  inspired? — to  which  question,  were 
it  put,  our  answer  might  only  be,  God  is  great  1 — but 
the  question  is,  Was  our  prophet  so  inspired  ?  does 
he  himself  offer  evidence  of  the  fact  ?  Or,  on  the  con- 
trary, in  naming  Cyrus  does  he  give  himself  out  as  a 
contemporary  of  Cyrus,  who  already  saw  the  great 
Persian  above  the  horizon  ?  To  this  question  only  the 
writings  under  discussion  can  give  us  an  answer.  Let 
us  see  what  they  have  to  say. 

Apart  from  the  question  of  the  date,  no  chapters  in 
the  Bible  are  interpreted  with  such  complete  unanimity 
as  Isa.  xl.-xlviii.  They  plainly  set  forth  certain  things 
as  having  already  taken  place — the  Exile  and  Captivity, 
the  ruin  of  Jerusalem,  and  the  devastation  of  the 
Holy  Land.  Israel  is  addressed  as  having  exhausted 
the  time  of  her  penalty,  and  is  proclaimed  to  be  ready 
for  deliverance.     Some  of  the  people  are  comforted  as 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


being  in  despair  because  redemption  does  not  draw 
near;  others  are  exhorted  to  leave  the  city  of  their 
bondage,  as  if  they  were  growing  too  famihar  with  its 
idolatrous  life.  Cyrus  is  named  as  their  deliverer,  and 
is  pointed  out  as  already  called  upon  his  career,  and  as 
blessed  with  success  by  Jehovah.  It  is  also  promised 
that  he  will  immediately  add  Babylon  to  his  conquests, 
and  so  set  God's  people  free. 

Now  all  this  is  not  predicted,  as  if  from  the  stand- 
point of  a  previous  century.  It  is  nowhere  said — as 
we  should  expect  it  to  be  said,  if  the  prophecy  had 
been  uttered  by  Isaiah — that  Assyria,  the  dominant 
world-power  of  Isaiah's  day,  was  to  disappear  and 
Babylon  to  take  her  place ;  that  then  the  Babylonians 
should  lead  the  Jews  into  an  exile  which  they  had 
escaped  at  the  hands  of  Assyria ;  and  that  after 
nearly  seventy  years  of  suffering  God  would  raise 
up  Cyrus  as  a  deliverer.  There  is  none  of  this 
prediction,  which  we  might  fairly  have  expected  had 
the  prophecy  been  Isaiah's ;  because,  however  far 
Isaiah  carries  us  into  the  future,  he  never  fails  to  start 
from  the  circumstances  of  his  own  day.  Still  more 
significant,  however — there  is  not  even  the  kind  of 
prediction  that  we  find  in  Jeremiah's  prophecies  of  the 
Exile,  with  which  indeed  it  is  most  instructive  to  com- 
pare Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  Jeremiah  also  spoke  of  exile  and 
deliverance,  but  it  was  always  with  the  grammar  of  the 
future.  He  fairly  and  openly  predicted  both ;  and, 
let  us  especially  remember,  he  did  so  with  a  meagreness 
of  description,  a  reserve  and  reticence  about  details, 
which  are  simply  unintelligible  if  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  was 
written  before  his  day,  and  by  so  well-known  a  prophet 
as  Isaiah.  No  :  in  the  statements,  which  our  chapters 
make  concerning  the  Exile  and  the  condition  of  Israel 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.-LXVI. 


under  it,  there  is  no  prediction,  not  the  slightest  trace 
of  that  grammar  of  the  future  in  which  Jeremiah's  pro- 
phecies are  constantly  uttered.  But  there  is  a  direct 
appeal  to  the  conscience  of  a  people  already  long  under 
the  discipline  of  God  ;  their  circumstance  of  exile  is 
taken  for  granted ;  there  is  a  most  vivid  and  delicate 
appreciation  of  their  present  fears  and  doubts,  and  to 
these  the  deliverer  Cyrus  is  not  only  named,  but  intro- 
duced as  an  actual  and  notorious  personage  already  upon 
the  midway  of  his  irresistible  career. 

These  facts  are  more  broadly  based  than  just  at  first 
sight  appears.  You  cannot  turn  their  flank  by  the 
argument  that  Hebrew  prophets  were  in  the  habit  of 
employing  in  their  predictions  what  is  called  "  the 
prophetic  perfect " — that  is,  that  in  the  ardour  of  their 
conviction  that  certain  things  would  take  place  they 
talked  of  these,  as  the  flexibility  of  the  Hebrew  tenses 
allowed  them  to  do,  in  the  past  or  perfect  as  if  the 
things  had  actually  taken  place.  No  such  argument  is 
possible  in  the  case  of  the  introduction  of  Cyrus.  For 
it  is  not  only  that  the  prophecy,  with  what  might  be 
the  mere  ardour  of  vision,  represents  the  Persian  as 
already  above  the  horizon  and  upon  the  flowing  tide 
of  victory ;  but  that,  in  the  course  of  a  sober  argument 
for  the  unique  divinity  of  the  God  of  Israel,  which  takes 
place  throughout  chs.  xli.-xlviii.,  Cyrus,  alive  and 
irresistible,  already  accredited  by  success,  and  with 
Babylonia  at  his  feet,  is  pointed  out  as  the  unmis- 
takable proof  that  former  prophecies  of  a  deliverance 
for  Israel  are  at  last  coming  to  pass.  Cyrus,  in  short, 
is  not  presented  as  a  prediction,  but  as  the  proof  that 
a  prediction  is  being  fulfilled.  Unless  he  had  already 
appeared  in  flesh  and  blood,  and  was  on  the  point  of 
striking  at  Babylon,  with  all  the  prestige  of  unbroken 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


victory,  a  great  part  of  Isa.  xli.-xlviii.  would  be  utterly 
unintelligible. 

This  argument  is  so  conclusive  for  the  date  of  Second 
Isaiah,  that  it  may  be  well  to  state  it  a  little  more  in 
detail,  even  at  the  risk  of  anticipating  some  of  the 
exposition  of  the  text. 

Among  the  Jews  at  the  close  of  the  Exile  there 
appear  to  have  been  two  classes.  One  class  was 
hopeless  of  deliverance,  and  to  their  hearts  is  addressed 
such  a  prophecy  as  ch.  xl.  :  Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye 
My  people.  But  there  was  another  class,  of  opposite 
temperament,  who  had  only  too  strong  opinions  on  the 
subject  of  deliverance.  In  bondage  to  the  letter  of 
Scripture  and  to  the  great  precedents  of  their  history, 
these  Jews  appear  to  have  insisted  that  the  Deliverer 
to  come  must  be  a  Jew,  and  a  descendant  of  David. 
And  the  bent  of  much  of  the  prophet's  urgency  in 
ch.  xlv.  is  to  persuade  those  pedants,  that  the  Gentile 
Cyrus,  who  had  appeared  to  be  not  only  the  biggest 
man  of  his  age,  but  the  very  likely  means  of  Israel's 
redemption,  was  of  Jehovah's  own  creation  and  calling. 
Does  not  such  an  argument  necessarily  imply  that 
Cyrus  was  already  present,  an  object  of  doubt  and 
debate  to  earnest  minds  in  Israel  ?  Or  are  we  to 
suppose  that  all  this  doubt  and  debate  were  foreseen, 
rehearsed  and  answered  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
before  the  time  by  so  famous  a  prophet  as  Isaiah,  and 
that,  in  spite  of  his  prediction  and  answer,  the  doubt 
and  debate  nevertheless  took  place  in  the  minds  of 
the  very  Israelites,  who  were  most  earnest  students  of 
ancient  prophecy  ?  The  thing  has  only  to  be  stated 
to  be  felt  to  be  impossible. 

But  besides  the  pedants  in  Israel,  there  is  apparent 
through  these  prophecies  another  body  of  men,  against 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI.  ii 

whom  also  Jehovah  claims  the  actual  Cyrus  for  His 
own.  They  are  the  priests  and  worshippers  of  the 
heathen  idols.  It  is  well  known  that  the  advent  of 
Cyrus  cast  the  Gentile  religions  of  the  time  and  their 
counsellors  into  confusion.  The  wisest  priests  were 
perplexed ;  the  oracles  of  Greece  and  Asia  Minor  either 
were  dumb  when  consulted  about  the  Persian,  or  gave 
more  than  usually  ambiguous  answers.  Over  against 
this  perplexity  and  despair  of  the  heathen  religions,  our 
prophet  confidently  claims  Cyrus  for  Jehovah's  own. 
In  a  debate  in  ch.  xli.,  in  which  he  seeks  to  establish 
Jehovah's  righteousness — that  is,  Jehovah's  faithfulness 
to  His  word,  and  power  to  carry  out  His  predictions — 
the  prophet  speaks  of  ancient  prophecies  which  have 
come  from  Jehovah,  and  points  to  Cyrus  as  their  fulfil- 
ment. It  does  not  matter  to  us  in  the  meantime  what 
those  prophecies  were.  They  may  have  been  certain 
of  Jeremiah's  predictions ;  we  may  be  sure  that  they 
cannot  have  contained  anything  so  definite  as  Cyrus' 
name,  or  such  a  proof  of  Divine  foresight  must  certainly 
have  formed  part  of  the  prophet's  plea.  It  is  enough 
that  they  could  be  quoted ;  our  business  is  rather  with 
the  evidence  which  the  prophet  offers  of  their  fulfil- 
ment. That  evidence  is  Cyrus.  Would  it  have  been 
possible  to  refer  the  heathen  to  Cyrus  as  proof  that 
those  ancient  prophecies  were  being  fulfilled,  unless 
Cyrus  had  been  visible  to  the  heathen, — unless  the 
heathen  had  been  beginning  already  to  feel  this  Persian 
"from  the  sunrise"  in  all  his  weight  of  war?  It  is 
no  esoteric  doctrine  which  the  prophet  is  unfolding 
to  initiated  Israelites  about  Cyrus.  He  is  making  an 
appeal  to  men  of  the  world  to  face  facts.  Could  he 
possibly  have  made  such  an  appeal  unless  the  facts  had 
been  there^  unless  Cyrus  had  been  within  the  ken  of 


12  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

"  the  natural  man  "  ?  Unless  Cyrus  and  his  conquests 
were  already  historically  present,  the  argument  in 
xli.-xlviii.  is  unintelligible. 

If  this  evidence  for  the  exilic  date  of  Isa.  xl.-xlviii. 
— for  all  these  chapters  hang  together — required  any 
additional  support,  it  would  find  it  in  the  fact  that 
the  prophet  does  not  wholly  treat  of  what  is  past  and 
over,  but  makes  some  predictions  as  well.  Cyrus  is 
on  the  way  of  triumph,  but  Babylon  has  still  to  fall 
by  his  hand.  Babylon  has  still  to  fall,  before  the  exiles 
can  go  free.  Now,  if  our  prophet  were  predicting  from 
the  standpoint  of  one  hundred  and  forty  years  before, 
why  did  he  make  this  sharp  distinction  between  two 
events  which  appeared  so  closely  together  ?  If  he  had 
both  the  advent  of  Cyrus  and  the  fall  of  Babylon  in  his 
long  perspective,  why  did  he  not  use  ''the  prophetic 
perfect "  for  both  ?  That  he  speaks  of  the  first  as  past 
and  of  the  second  as  still  to  come,  would  most  surely, 
if  there  had  been  no  tradition  the  other  way,  have 
been  accepted  by  all  as  sufficient  evidence,  that  the 
advent  of  Cyrus  was  behind  him  and  the  fall  of  Babylon 
still  in  front  of  him,  when  he  wrote  these  chapters. 

Thus  the  earlier  part,  at  least,  of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi. — that 
is,  chs.  xl.-xlviii. — compels  us  to  date  it  between  555, 
Cyrus'  advent,  and  538,  Babylon's  fall.  But  some 
think  that  we  may  still  further  narrow  the  limits.  In 
ch.  xli.  25,  Cyrus,  whose  own  kingdom  lay  east  of 
Babylonia,  is  described  as  invading  Babylonia  from  the 
north.  This,  it  has  been  thought,  must  refer  to  his 
union  with  the  Medes  in  549,  and  his  threatened 
descent  upon  Mesopotamia  from  their  quarter  of  the 
prophet's  horizon.*      If  it  be  so,  the  possible  years 

*  Driver's  Isaiah,  pp.  137,  139. 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI. 


n 


of  our  prophecy  are  reduced  to  eleven,  S49-538. 
But  even  if  we  take  the  wider  and  more  certain  limit, 
555  to  538,  we  may  well  say  that  there  are  very  few 
chapters  in  the  whole  of  the  Old  Testament  whose 
date  can  be  fixed  so  precisely  as  the  date  of  chs.  xl.- 
xlviii. 

If  what  has  been  unfolded  in  the  preceding 
paragraphs  is  recognised  as  the  statement  of  the 
chapters  themselves,  it  will  be  felt  that  further  evidence 
of  an  exihc  date  is  scarcely  needed.  And  those,  who 
are  acquainted  with  the  controversy  upon  the  evidence 
furnished  by  the  style  and  language  of  the  prophecies, 
will  admit  how  far  short  in  decisiveness  it  falls  of  the 
arguments  offered  above.  But  we  may  fairly  ask 
whether  there  is  anything  opposed  to  the  conclusion 
we  have  reached,  either,  first,  in  the  local  colour  of  the 
prophecies;  or,  second,  in  their  language;  or,  third,  in 
their  thought — anything  which  shows  that  they  are 
more  likely  to  have  been  Isaiah's  than  of  exilic  origin. 

I.  It  has  often  been  urged  against  the  exihc  date  of 
these  prophecies,  that  they  wear  so  very  little  local 
colour,  and  one  of  the  greatest  of  critics,  Ewald,  has 
felt  himself,  therefore,  permitted  to  place  their  home, 
not  in  Babylonia,  but  in  Egypt,  while  he  maintains 
the  exilic  date.  But,  as  we  shall  see  in  surveying 
the  condition  of  the  exiles,  it  was  natural  for  the  best 
among  them,  their  psalmists  and  prophets,  to  have  no 
eyes  for  the  colours  of  Babylon.  They  hved  inwardly ; 
they  were  much  more  the  inhabitants  of  their  own 
broken  hearts  than  of  that  gorgeous  foreign  land ; 
when  their  thoughts  rose  out  of  themselves  it  was  to 
seek  immediately  the  far-away  Zion.  How  little  local 
colour  is  there  in  the  writings  of  Ezekiel !  Isa.  xl.-lxvi. 
has  even  more   to  show ;   for   indeed  the  absence  of 


14  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

local  colour  from  our  prophecy  has  been  greatly 
exaggerated.  We  shall  find  as  we  follow  the  exposi- 
tion, break  after  break  of  Babylonian  hght  and  shadow 
falling  across  our  path, — the  temples,  the  idol-manu- 
factories, the  processions  of  images,  the  diviners  and 
astrologers,  the  gods  and  altars  especially  cultivated 
by  the  characteristic  mercantile  spirit  of  the  place; 
the  shipping  of  that  mart  of  nations,  the  crowds  of  her 
merchants ;  the  glitter  of  many  waters,  and  even  that 
intolerable  glare,  which  so  frequently  curses  the  skies 
of  Mesopotamia  (xlix.  lo).  The  prophet  speaks  of  the 
hills  of  his  native  land  with  just  the  same  longing,  that 
Ezekiel  and  a  probable  psalmist  of  the  Exile  *  betray, — 
the  homesickness  of  a  highland-born  man  whose  prison 
is  on  a  flat,  monotonous  plain.  The  beasts  he  mentions 
have  for  the  most  part  been  recognised  as  familiar  in 
Babylonia ;  and  while  the  same  cannot  be  said  of  the 
trees  and  plants  he  names,  it  has  been  observed  that  the 
passages,  into  which  he  brings  them,  are  passages  where 
his  thoughts  are  fixed  on  the  restoration  to  Palestine.! 
Besides  these,  there  are  many  delicate  symptoms  of  the 
presence,  before  the  prophet,  of  a  people  in  a  foreign 
land,  engaged  in  commerce,  but  without  political  re- 
sponsibilities, each  of  which,  taken  by  itself,  may  be 
insufficient  to  convince,  but  the  reiterated  expression 
of  which  has  even  betrayed  commentators,  who  lived 
too  early  for  the  theory  of  a  second  Isaiah,  into  the 
involuntary  admission  of  an  exilic  authorship.  It  will 
perhaps  startle  some  to  hear  John  Calvin  quoted  on 
behalf  of  the  exilic  date  of  these  prophecies.  But  let 
us  read  and  consider  this  statement  of  his  ;   '^  Some 


*  Psalm  cxxi. 

■j"  Driver's  Isaiah:  His  Life  and  Times,  p.  191. 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVL  15 

regard  must  be  had  to  the  time  when  this  prophecy  was 
uttered ;  for  since  the  rank  of  the  kingdom  had  been 
obliterated,  and  the  name  of  the  royal  family  had 
become  mean  and  contemptible,  during  the  captivity 
in  Babylon,  it  might  seem  as  if  through  the  ruin  of  that 
family  the  truth  of  God  had  fallen  into  decay;  and 
therefore  he  bids  them  contemplate  by  faith  the  throne 
of  David,  which  had  been  cast  down."  * 

2.  What  we  have  seen  to  be  true  of  the  local  colour 
of  our  prophecy,  holds  good  also  of  its  style  and 
language.  There  is  nothing  in  either  of  these  to 
commit  us  to  an  Isaian  authorship,  or  to  make  an  exilic 
date  improbable ;  on  the  contrary,  the  language  and 
style,  while  containing  no  stronger  nor  more  frequent 
resemblances  to  the  language  and  style  of  Isaiah  than 
may  be  accounted  for  by  the  natural  influence  of  so 
great  a  prophet  upon  his  successors,  are  signalised  by 
differences  from  his  undisputed  oracles,  too  constant, 
too  subtle,  and  sometimes  too  sharp,  to  make  it  at  all 
probable  that  the  whole  book  came  from  the  same  man. 
On  this  point  it  is  enough  to  refer  our  readers  to 
the  recent  exhaustive  and  very  able  reviews  of  the 
evidence  by  Canon  Cheyne  in  the  second  volume  01 
his  Commentary,  and  by  Canon  Driver  in  the  last 
chapter  of  Isaiah :  His  Life  and  Times,  and  to  quote 
the  following  words  of  so  great  an  authority  as  Professor 
A.  B.  Davidson.  After  remarking  on  the  difference  in 
vocabulary  of  the  two  parts  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  he 
adds  that  it  is  not  so  much  words  in  themselves  as  the 
peculiar  uses  and  combinations  of  them,  and  especially 
'^the  peculiar  articulation  of  sentences  and  the  move- 
ment of  the  whole  discourse,  by  which  an  impression 

*  Calvin  on  Isa.  Iv.  3. 


i6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

is  produced  so  unlike  the  impression  produced  by  the 
earher  parts  of  the  book."  * 

3.  It  is  the  same  with  the  thought  and  doctrine  of 
our  prophecy.  In  this  there  is  nothing  to  make  the 
Isaian  authorship  probable,  or  an  exilic  date  impos- 
sible. But,  on  the  contrary,  whether  we  regard  the 
needs  of  the  people  or  the  analogies  of  the  development 
of  their  religion,  we  find  that,  while  everything  suits 
the  Exile,  nearly  everything  is  foreign  both  to  the  sub- 
jects and  to  the  methods  of  Isaiah.  We  shall  observe 
the  items  of  this  as  we  go  along,  but  one  of  them  may 
be  mentioned  here  (it  will  afterwards  require  a  chapter 
to  itself),  our  prophet's  use  of  the  terms  righteous  and 
righteousness.  No  one,  who  has  carefully  studied  the 
meaning  which  these  terms  bear  in  the  authentic  oracles 
of  Isaiah,  and  the  use  to  which  they  are  put  in  the 
prophecies  under  discussion,  can  fail  to  find  in  the 
difference  a  striking  corroboration  of  our  argument — 
that  the  latter  were  composed  by  a  different  mind  than 
Isaiah's,  speaking  to  a  different  generation.-f* 

I  To  sum  up  this  whole  argument.  We  have  seen 
that  there  is  no  evidence  in  the  Book  of  Isaiah  to  prove 
that  it  was  all  by  himself,  but  much  testimony  which 
points  to  a  plurality  of  authors;  that  chs.  xl.-lxvi. 
nowhere  assert  themselves  to  be  by  Isaiah  ;  and  that 
there  is  no  other  well-grounded  claim  of  Scripture  or 
of  doctrine  on  behalf  of  his  authorship.  We  have 
then  shown  that  chs.  xl.-xlviii.  do  not  only  present  the 
Exile  as  if  nearly  finished  and  Cyrus  as  if  already  come, 
while  the  fall  of  Babylon  is  still  future ;  but  that  it  is 

*  So  quoted  by  Driver  (Jsaiah,  etc.,  p.  200),  from  the  British  and 
Foreign  Evangelical  Review,  1879,  P-  339*  t  See  p.  223. 


/ 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI.  17 

essential  to  one  of  their  main  arguments  that  Cyrus 
should  be  standing  before  Israel  and  the  world,  as  a 
successful  warrior,  on  his  way  to  attack  Babylon.  That 
led  us  to  date  these  chapters  between  555  and  538. 
Turning  then  to  other  evidence, — the  local  colour  they 
show,  their  language  and  style,  and  their  theology, — 
we  have  found  nothing  which  conflicts  with  that  date, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  a  very  great  deal,  which  much 
more  agrees  with  it  than  with  the  date,  or  with  the 
authorship,  of  Isaiah. 

It  will  be  observed,  however,  that  the  question  has 
been  limited  to  the  earlier  chapters  of  the  twenty-seven 
under  discussion,  viz.,  to  xl.-xlviii.  Does  the  same 
conclusion  hold  good  of  xhx.  to  Ixvi.  ?  This  can  be 
properly  discovered  only  as  we  closely  follow  their  ex- 
position ;  it  is  enough  in  the  meantime  to  have  got  firm 
footing  on  the  Exile.  We  can  feel  our  way  bit  by  bit 
from  this  standpoint  onwards.  Let  us  now  merely  anti- 
cipate the  main  features  of  the  rest  of  the  prophecy. 

A  new  section  has  been  marked  by  many  as  beginning 
with  ch.  xlix.  This  is  because  ch.  xlviii.  concludes 
with  a  refrain  :  There  is  no  peace,  saith  Jehovah, 
to  the  wicked,  which  occurs  again  at  the  end  of 
ch.  Ivii.,  and  because  with  ch.  xlviii.  Babylon  and 
Cyrus  drop  out  of  sight.  But  the  circumstances  are 
still  those  of  exile,  and,  as  Professor  Davidson  re- 
marks, ch.  xlix.  is  parallel  in  thought  to  ch.  xlii., 
and  also  takes  for  granted  the  restoration  of  Israel 
in  ch.  xlviii.,  proceeding  naturally  from  that  to 
the  statement  of  Israel's  world-mission.  Apart  from 
the  alternation  of  passages  dealing  with  the  Servant 
of  the  Lord,  and  passages  whose  subject  is  Zion — 
an  alternation  which  begins  pretty  early  in  the  pro- 
phecy, and  has  suggested  to  some  its  composition  out 

VOL.  II.  2 


i8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

of  two  different  writings  * — the  first  real  break  in  the 
sequence  occurs  at  ch.  hi.  13,  where  the  prophecy  of 
the  sin-bearing  Servant  is  introduced.  By  most  critics 
this  is  held  to  be  an  insertion,  for  ch.  liv.  i  follows 
naturally  upon  ch.  lii.  12,  though  it  is  undeniable  that 
there  is  also  some  association  between  chs.  lii.  13-liii., 
and  ch.  liv.f  In  chs.  liv.-lv.  we  are  evidently  still  in 
exile.  It  is  in  commenting  on  a  verse  of  these  chapters 
that  Calvin  makes  the  admission  of  exilic  origin  which 
has  been  quoted  above. 

A  number  of  short  prophecies  now  follow,  till  the 
end  of  ch.  lix.  is  reached.  These,  as  we- shall  see, 
make  it  extremely  difficult  to  believe  in  the  original 
unity  of  "  Second  Isaiah."  Some  of  them,  it  is  true, 
lie  in  evident  circumstance  of  exile ;  but  others  are 
undoubtedly  of  earlier  date,  reflecting  the  scenery  of 
Palestine,  and  the  habits  of  the  people  in  their  political 
independence,  with  Jehovah's  judgement-cloud  still 
unburst,  but  low^ering.  Such  is  ch.  Ivi.  9-lvii., 
which  regards  the  Exile  as  still  to  come,  quotes  the 
natural  features  of  Palestine,  and  charges  the  Jews  with 
unbelieving  diplomacy — a  charge  not  possible  against 
them  when  they  were  in  captivity.  But  others  of  these 
short  prophecies  are,  in  the  opinion  of  some  critics, 
post-exilic.  Cheyne  assigns  ch.  Ivi.  to  after  the  Return, 
when  the  temple  was  standing,  and  the  duty  of  holding 
fasts  and  sabbaths  could  be  enforced,  as  it  was  enforced 
by  Nehemiah.  I  shall  give,  when  we  reach  the  passage, 
my  reasons  for  doubting  his  conclusion.  The  chapter 
seems  to  me  as  likely  to  have  been  written  upon  the 
eve  of  the  Return  as  after  the  Return  had  taken  place. 

*  Professor  Briggs'  Messianic  Prophecy,  339  fF. 
"I*  Ewald  is  very  strong  on  this. 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI.  19 

Ch.  Ivii.,  the  eighteenth  of  our  twenty-seven  chap- 
ters, closes  with  the  same  refrain  as  ch.  xlviii.,  the 
ninth  of  the  series  :  There  is  no  peace,  saith  Jehovah, 
to  the  wicked.  Ch.  Iviii.  has,  therefore,  been  regarded 
as  beginning  the  third  great  division  of  the  prophecy. 
But  here  again,  w^hile  there  is  certainly  an  advance  in 
the  treatment  of  the  subject,  and  the  prophet  talks  less 
of  the  redemption  of  the  Jews  and  more  of  the  glory  of 
the  restoration  of  Zion^  the  point  of  transition  is  very 
difficult  to  mark.  Some  critics  *  regard  ch.  Iviii.  as 
post-exilic  ;  but  when  w^e  come  to  it  we  shall  find  a 
number  of  reasons  for  supposing  it  to  belong,  just  as 
much  as  Ezekiel,  to  the  Exile.  Ch.  lix.  is  perhaps  the 
most  difficult  portion  of  all,  because  it  makes  the  Jews 
responsible  for  civic  justice  in  a  way  they  could  hardly 
be  conceived  to  be  in  exile,  and  yet  speaks,  in  the 
language  of  other  portions  of  '' Second  Isaiah/'  of  a 
deliverance  that  cannot  well  be  other  than  the  de- 
liverance from  exile.  We  shall  find  in  this  chapter 
likely  marks  of  the  fusion  of  two  distinct  addresses, 
making  the  conclusion  probable  that  it  is  Israel's  earlier 
conscience  which  we  catch  here,  following  her  into 
the  days  of  exile,  and  reciting  her  former  guilt  just 
before  pardon  is  assured.  Chs.  Ix.,  Ixi.,  and  Ixii.  are 
certainly  exilic.  The  inimitable  prophecy,  ch.  Ixiii.  1-6, 
complete  within  itself,  and  unique  in  its  beauty,  is 
either  a  promise  given  just  before  the  deliverance  from 
a  long  captivity  of  Israel  under  heathen  natipns  (ver.  4), 
or  an  exultant  song  of  triumph  immediately  after 
such  a  deliverance  has  taken  place.  Ch.  Ixiii.  7-lxiv. 
implies  a  ruined  temple  (ver.  10),  but  bears  no  traces  of 
the  writer  being  in  exile.     It  has  been  assigned  to  the 

♦  Including  Professor  Cheyne,  Encyc.  Britann.,  article  "  Isaiah." 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


period  of  the  first  attempts  to  rebuild  Jerusalem  after 
the  Return.  Ch.  Ixv.  has  been  assigned  to  the  same 
date,  and  its  local  colour  interpreted  as  that  of  Palestine. 
But  we  shall  find  the  colour  to  be  just  as  probably  that 
of  Babylon,  and  again  I  do  not  see  any  certain  proofs  of 
a  post-exilic  date.  Ch.  Ixvi.,  however,  betrays  more 
evidence  of  being  written  after  the  Return.  It  divides 
into  two  parts.  In  verses  I  to  4  the  temple  is  still 
unbuilt,  but  the  building  would  seem  to  be  already 
begun.  In  verses  5  to  24,  the  arrival  of  the  Jews  in 
Palestine,  the  resumption  of  the  Hfe  of  the  sacred  com- 
munity, and  the  disappointments  of  the  returned  at 
the  first  meagre  results,  seem  to  be  implied.  And  the 
music  of  the  book  dies  out  in  tones  of  warning,  that  sin 
still  hinders  the  Lord's  work  with  His  people. 


This  rapid  survey  has  made  two  things  sufficiently 
clear.  First,  that  while  the  bulk  of  chs.  xl.-lxvi.  was 
composed  in  Babylonia  during  the  Exile  of  the  Jews, 
there  are  considerable  portions  which  date  from  before 
the  Exile,  and  betray  a  Palestinian  origin  ;  and  one  or 
two  smaller  pieces  that  seem — rather  less  evidently, 
however — to  take  for  granted  the  Return  from  the  Exile. 
But,  secondly,  all  these  pieces,  which  it  seems  necessary 
to  assign  to  different  epochs  and  authors,  have  been 
arranged  so  as  to  exhibit  a  certain  order  and  progress 
— an  order,  more  or  less  observed,  of  date,  and  a 
progress  very  apparent  (as  we  shall  see  in  the  course 
of  exposition)  of  thought  and  of  clearness  in  definition. 
The  largest  portion,  of  whose  unity  we  are  assured  and 
whose  date  we  can  fix,  is  found  at  the  beginning. 
Chs.  xl.-xlviii.  are  certainly  by  one  hand,  and  may  be 
dated,  as  we  have  seen,   between  555  and  538 — the 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI 


period  of  Cyrus'  approach  to  take  Babylon.  There 
the  interest  in  Cyrus  ceases,  and  the  thought  of  the 
redemption  from  Babylon  is  mainly  replaced  by  that  of 
the  subsequent  Return.  Along  with  these  lines,  we 
shall  discover  a  development  in  the  prophecy's  great 
doctrine  of  the  Servant  of  Jehovah.  But  even  this  dies 
away,  as  if  the  experience  of  suffering  and  discipline 
were  being  replaced  by  that  of  return  and  restoration  ; 
and  it  is  Zion  in  her  glory,  and  the  spiritual  mission  of 
the  people,  and  the  vengeance  of  the  Lord,  and  the 
building  of  the  temple,  and  a  number  of  practical  details 
in  the  life  and  worship  of  the  restored  community,  which 
fill  up  the  remainder  of  the  book,  along  with  a  few 
echoes  from  pre-exilic  times.  Can  we  escape  feeling 
in  all  this  a  definite  design  and  arrangement,  which 
fails  to  be  absolutely  perfect,  probably,  from  the  nature 
of  the  materials  at  the  arranger's  disposal  ? 

We  are,  therefore,  justified  in  coming  to  the  provi- 
sional conclusion,  that  Second  Isaiah  is  not  a  unity,  in 
so  far  as  it  consists  of  a  number  of  pieces  by  different 
men,  whom  God  raised  up  at  various  times  before,  during, 
and  after  the  Exile,  to  comfort  and  exhort  amid  the  shift- 
ing circumstance  and  tempers  of  His  people ;  but  that 
it  is  a  unity,  in  so  far  as  these  pieces  have  been  gathered 
together  by  an  editor  very  soon  after  the  Return  from  the 
Exile,  in  an  order  as  regular  both  in  point  of  time  and 
subject  as  the  somewhat  mixed  material  would  permit. 
It  is  in  this  sense  that  throughout  this  volume  we  shall 
talk  of  ''  our  prophet,"  or  *'  the  prophet ;"  up  to  ch.  xlix., 
at  least,  we  shall  feel  that  the  expression  is  literally  true ; 
after  that  it  is  rather  an  editorial  than  an  original  unity 
which  is  apparent.  In  this  question  of  unity  the  dramatic 
style  of  the  prophecy  forms,  no  doubt,  the  greatest 
difficulty.     Who  shall  dare  to  determine  of  the  many 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


soliloquies,  apostrophes,  lyrics  and  other  pieces  that 
are  here  gathered,  often  in  want  of  any  connection  save 
that  of  dramatic  grouping  and  a  certain  sympathy  of 
temper,  whether  they  are  by  the  same  author  or  have 
been  collected  from  several  origins  ?  We  must  be 
content  to  leave  the  matter  uncertain.  One  great 
reason,  which  we  have  not  yet  quoted,  for  supposing 
that  the  whole  prophecy  is  not  by  one  man,  is  that  if 
it  had  been  his  name  would  certainly  have  come  down 
with  it. 

Do  not  let  it  be  thought  that  such  a  conclusion,  as  we 
have  been  led  to,  is  merely  a  dogma  of  modern  criticism. 
Here,  if  anywhere,  the  critic  is  but  the  patient  student 
of  Scripture,  searching  for  the  testimony  of  the  sacred 
text  about  itself,  and  formulating  that.  If  it  be  found 
that  such  a  testimony  conflicts  with  ecclesiastical  tradi- 
tion, however  ancient  and  universal,  so  much  the  worse 
for  tradition.  In  Protestant  circles,  at  least,  we  have 
no  choice.  Litera  Scripta  manet.  When  we  know  that 
the  only  evidence  for  the  Isaian  authorship  of  chs.  xl.-lxvi. 
is  tradition,  supported  by  an  unthinking  interpretation 
of  New  Testament  citations,  while  the  whole  testimony 
of  these  Scriptures  themselves  denies  them  to  be 
Isaiah's,  we  cannot  help  making  our  choice,  and  accept- 
ing the  testimony  of  Scripture.  Do  we  find  them  any 
the  less  wonderful  or  Divine  ?  Do  they  comfort  less  ? 
Do  they  speak  with  less  power  to  the  conscience  ?  Do 
they  testify  with  more  uncertain  voice  to  our  Lord  and 
Saviour  ?  It  will  be  the  task  of  the  following  pages  to 
show  that,  interpreted  in  connection  with  the  history 
out  of  w^hich  they  themselves  say  that  God's  Spirit 
drew  them,  these  twenty-seven  chapters  become  only 
more  prophetic  of  Christ,  and  more  comforting  and 
instructive  to  men,  than  they  were  before. 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVL  23 

But  the  remarkable  fact  is,  that  anciently  tradition 
itself  appears  to  have  agreed  with  the  results  of  modern 
scholarship.  The  original  place  of  the  Book  of  Isaiah 
in  the  Jewish  canon  seems  to  have  been  after  both 
Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel,*  a  fact  which  goes  to  prove  that 
it  did  not  reach  completion  till  a  later  date  than  the 
works  of  these  two  prophets  of  the  Exile. 

If  now  it  be  asked,  Why  should  a  series  of  prophe- 
cies written  in  the  Exile  be  attached  to  the  authentic 
works  of  Isaiah  ?  that  is  a  fair  question,  and  one  which 
the  supporters  of  the  exilic  authorship  have  the  duty 
laid  upon  them  of  endeavouring  to  answer.  Fortun- 
ately they  are  not  under  the  necessity  of  falling  back, 
for  want  of  other  reasons,  on  the  supposition  that  this 
attachment  was  due  to  the  error  of  some  scribe,  or  to 
the  custom  which  ancient  writers  practised  of  filling  up 
any  part  of  a  volume,  that  remained  blank  when  one 
book  was  finished,  with  the  writing  of  any  other  that 
would  fit  the  place. t  The  first  of  these  reasons  is  too 
accidental,  the  second  too  artificial,  in  face  of  the  un- 
doubted sympathy  which  exists  among  all  parts  of  the 
Book  of  Isaiah.  Isaiah  himself  plainly  prophesied  of  an 
exile  longer  than  his  own  generation  experienced,  and 
prophesied  of  a  return  from  it  (ch.  xi.).  We  saw  no 
reason  to  dispute  his  claims  to  the  predictions  about 
Babylon  in  chs.  xxi.  and  xxxix.  Isaiah's,  too,  more  than 
any  other  prophet's,  were  those  great  and  final  hopes 
of  the  Old  Testament — the  survival  of  Israel  and  the 


*  According  to  the  arrangement  given  in  the  Talmud  (Baba  bathra^ 
f.  14,  col.  2):  "Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  Isaiah,  the  "Twelve."  Cf.  Bleek, 
Introduction  to  Old  Testament,  on  Isaiah;  Orelli's  Isaiah,  Eng.  ed., 
p.  214. 

f  Robertson  Smith,  The  Old  Testament  in  Jewish  Church,  109, 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


gathering  of  the  Gentiles  to  the  worship  of  Jehovah  at 
Jerusalem.  But  it  is  for  the  express  purpose  of  em- 
phasizing the  immediate  fulfilment  of  such  ancient 
predictions,  that  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  were  published.  Al- 
though our  prophet  has  new  things  to  publish,  his  first 
business  is  to  show  that  the  former  things  have  come  to 
pass,  especially  the  Exile,  the  survival  of  a  Remnant,  the 
sending  of  a  Deliverer,  the  doom  of  Babylon.  What 
more  natural  than  to  attach  to  his  utterances  those 
prophecies,  of  which  the  events  he  pointed  to  were 
the  vindication  and  fulfilment?  The  attachment  was 
the  more  easy  to  arrange  that  the  authentic  prophecies 
had  not  passed  from  Isaiah's  hand  in  a  fixed  form. 
They  do  not  bear  those  marks  of  their  author's  own 
editing,  which  are  borne  by  the  prophecies  both  of 
Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel.  It  is  impossible  to  be  dogmatic 
on  the  point.  But  these  facts — that  our  chapters  are 
concerned,  as  no  other  Scriptures  are,  with  the  fulfil- 
ment of  previous  prophecies ;  that  it  is  the  prophecies 
of  Isaiah  which  are  the  original  and  fullest  prediction 
of  the  events  they  are  busy  with  ;  and  that  the  form,  in 
which  Isaiah's  prophecies  are  handed  down,  did  not 
preclude  additions  of  this  kind  to  them — contribute  very 
evident  reasons  why  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.,  though  written  in  the 
Exile,  should  be  attached  to  Isa.  i.-xxxix.* 


Thus  we  present  a  theory  of  the  exilic  authorship 
of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  within   itself  complete  and  consistent, 

*  It  is  the  theory  of  some,  that  although  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  dates  as  a 
whole  from  the  Exile,  there  are  passages  in  it  by  Isaiah  himself,  or  in 
his  style  by  pupils  of  his  (Klostermann  in  Herzog's  Encydopadia  and 
Predenkam.p  in  his  Commentary),  But  this,  while  possible,  is  beyond 
proof. 


THE  DATE  OF  ISAIAH  XL.—LXVI.  25 

suited  to  all  parts  of  the  evidence,  and  not  opposed  by 
the  authority  of  any  part  of  Scripture.  In  consequence 
of  its  conclusion,  our  duty,  before  proceeding  to  the 
exposition  of  the  chapters,  is  twofold  :  first,  to  connect 
the  time  of  Isaiah  with  the  period  of  the  Captivity,  and 
then  to  sketch  the  condition  of  Israel  in  Exile.  This 
we  shall  undertake  in  the  next  three  chapters. 


Note   to    Chapter   I. 


Readers  may  wish  to  have  a  reference  to  other  passages  of 
this  volume,  in  which  the  questions  of  the  date,  authorship  and 
structure  of  Isaiah  xL-lxvi.  are  discussed.  See  pp.  65-68, 
112,  146  f.,  212,  22-}^',  Introduction  to  Book  III.;  opening 
paragraphs  of  ch.  xviii.  and  of  ch.  xix.,  etc. 


CHAPTER   II. 

FROM  ISAIAH   TO   THE  FALL   OF  JERUSALEM. 

701-587    B.C. 

AT  first  sight,  the  circumstances  of  Judah  in  the 
last  ten  years  of  the  seventh  century  present  a 
strong  resemblance  to  her  fortunes  in  the  last  ten  years 
of  the  eighth.  The  empire  of  the  world,  to  which  she 
belongs,  is  again  divided  between  Egypt  and  a  Meso- 
potamian  power.  Syria  is  again  the  field  of  their 
doubtful  battle,  and  the  question,  to  which  of  the  two 
shall  homage  be  paid,  still  forms  the  politics  of  all 
her  states.  Judah  still  vacillates,  intrigues  and  draws 
down  on  herself  the  wrath  of  the  North  by  her  treaties 
with  Egypt.  Again  there  is  a  great  pro^^het  and  states- 
man, whose  concern  is  righteousness,  who  exposes 
both  the  immorality  of  his  people  and  the  folly  of  their 
politics,  and  who  summons  the  evil  from  the  North  as 
God's  scourge  upon  Israel :  Isaiah  has  been  succeeded 
by  Jeremiah.  And,  as  if  to  complete  the  analogy,  the 
nation  has  once  more  passed  through  a  puritan  reforma- 
tion. Josiah  has,  even  more  thoroughly  than  Hezekiah, 
effected  the  disestablishment  of  idols. 

Beneath  this  circumstantial  resemblance,  however, 
there  is  one  fundamental  difference.  The  strength  of 
Isaiah's  preaching  was  bent,  especially  during  the 
closing  years  of  the  century,  to  establish  the  inviolable- 
ness  of  Jerusalem.     Against  the  threats  of  the  Assyrian 


FROM  ISAIAH  TO  THE  FALL  OF  JERUSALEM.       27 

siege,  and  in  spite  of  his  own  more  formidable  con- 
science of  his  people's  corruption,  Isaiah  persisted  that 
Zion  should  not  be  taken,  and  that  the  people,  though 
cut  down  to  their  roots,  should  remain  planted  in  the 
land, — the  stock  of  an  imperial  nation  in  the  latter  days. 
This  prophecy  was  vindicated  by  the  marvellous  relief 
of  Jerusalem  on  the  apparent  eve  of  her  capture  in  701. 
But  its  echoes  had  not  yet  died  away,  when  Jeremiah 
to  his  generation  delivered  the  very  opposite  message. 
Round  him  the  popular  prophets  babbled  by  rote 
Isaiah's  ancient  assurances  about  Zion.  Their  soft, 
monotonous  repetitions  lapped  pleasantly  upon  the 
immovable  self-confidence  of  the  people.  But  Jeremiah 
called  down  the  storm.  Even  while  prosperity  seemed 
to  give  him  the  lie,  he  predicted  the  speedy  ruin  of 
Temple  and  City,  and  summoned  Judah's  enemies 
against  her  in  the  name  of  the  God,  on  whose  former 
word  she  relied  for  peace.  The  contrast  between  the 
two  great  prophets  grows  most  dramatic  in  their  con- 
duct during  the  respective  sieges,  of  which  each  was 
the  central  figure.  Isaiah,  alone  steadfast  in  a  city  of 
despair,  defying  the  taunts  of  the  heathen,  rekindling 
within  the  dispirited  defenders,  whom  the  enemy  sought 
to  bribe  to  desertion,  the  passions  of  patriotism  and 
religion,  proclaiming  always,  as  with  the  voice  of  a 
trumpet,  that  Zion  must  stand  inviolate;  Jeremiah,  on 
the  contrary,  declaring  the  futiUty  of  resistance, 
counselling  each  citizen  to  save  his  own  life  from  the 
ruin  of  the  state,  in  treaty  with  the  enemy,  and  even 
arrested  as  a  deserter,— these  two  contrasting  figures 
and  attitudes  gather  up  the  difference  which  the  century 
had  wrought  in  the  fortunes  of  the  City  of  God.  And 
so,  while  in  701  Jerusalem  triumphed  in  the  Lord  by 
the  sudden  raising  of  the  Assyrian  siege,  three  years 


28  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

after  the  next  century  was  out  she  twice  succumbed 
to  the  Assyrian's  successor,  and  nine  years  later  was 
totally  destroyed. 

What  is  the  reason  of  this  difference,  which  a  cen- 
tury sufficed  to  work  ?  Why  was  the  sacredness  of 
Judah's  shrine  not  as  much  an  article  of  Jeremiah's 
as  of  Isaiah's  creed, — as  much  an  element  of  Divine 
providence  in  600  as  in  700  B.C.  ?  This  is  not  a  very 
hard  question  to  answer,  if  we  keep  in  our  regard  two 
things — firstly,  the  moral  condition  of  the  people,  and, 
secondly,  the  necessities  of  the  spiritual  religion,  which 
was  identified  for  the  time  with  their  fortunes. 

The  Israel,  which  was  delivered  into  captivity  at  the 
word  of  Jeremiah,  was  a  people  at  once  more  hardened 
and  more  exhausted  than  the  Israel,  which,  in  spite  of 
its  sin,  Isaiah's  efforts  had  succeeded  in  preserving 
upon  its  own  land.  A  century  had  come  and  gone  of 
further  grace  and  opportunity,  but  the  grace  had  been 
resisted,  the  opportunity  abused,  and  the  people  stood 
more  guilty  and  more  wilful  than  ever  before  God. 
Even  clearer,  however,  than  the  deserts  of  the  people 
was  the  need  of  their  religion.  That  local  and  tem- 
porary victory — after  all,  only  the  relief  of  a  mountain 
fortress  and  a  tribal  shrine — with  which  Isaiah  had 
identified  the  will  and  honour  of  Almighty  God,  could 
not  be  the  climax  of  the  history  of  a  spiritual  religion. 
It  was  impossible  for  Monotheism  to  rest  on  so  narrow 
and  material  a  security  as  that.  The  faith,  which  was 
to  overcome  the  world,  could  not  be  satisfied  with 
a  merel}^  national  triumph.  The  time  must  arrive — 
were  it  only  by  the  ordinary  progress  of  the  years 
and  unhastened  by  human  guilt — for  faith  and  piety 
to  be  weaned  from  the  forms  of  an  earthly  temple, 
however  sacred ;  for  the  individual — after  all,  the  real 


FROM  ISAIAH  TO  THE  FALL  OF  JERUSALEM.       29 

unit  of  religion — to  be  rendered  independent  of  the 
community  and  cast  upon  his  God  alone ;  and  for  this 
people,  to  whom  the  oracles  of  the  living  God  had  been 
entrusted,  to  be  led  out  from  the  selfish  pride  of 
guarding  these  for  their  own  honour — to  be  led  out, 
were  it  through  the  breaches  of  their  hitherto  inviolate 
walls,  and  amid  the  smoke  of  all  that  was  most  sacred 
to  them,  so  that  in  level  contact  with  mankind  they 
might  learn  to  communicate  their  glorious  trust.  There- 
fore, while  the  Exile  was  undoubtedly  the  penance, 
which  an  often-spared  but  ever  more  obdurate  people 
had  to  pay  for  their  accumulated  sins,  it  was  also  for 
the  meek  and  the  pure-hearted  in  Israel  a  step  upwards 
even  from  the  faith  and  the  results  of  Isaiah — perhaps 
the  most  eftectual  step  which  Israel's  religion  ever  took. 
Schultz  has  finely  said  :  "  The  proper  Tragedy  of 
History — doom  required  by  long-gathering  guilt,  and 
launched  upon  a  generation  which  for  itself  is  really 
turning  towards  good — is  most  strikingly  consummated 
in  the  Exile."  Yes :  but  this  is  only  half  the  truth. 
The  accomplishment  of  the  moral  tragedy  is  really  but 
one  incident  in  a  religious  epic — the  development  of  a 
spiritual  faith.  Long-delaying  Nemesis  overtakes  at 
last  the  sinners,  but  the  shock  of  the  blows,  which  beat 
the  guilty  nation  into  captivity,  releases  their  religion 
from  its  material  bonds.  Israel  on  the  way  to  Exile 
is  on  the  way  to  become  Israel  after  the  Spirit. 

With  these  principles  to  guide  us,  let  us  now,  for  a 
little,  thread  our  way  through  the  crowded  details  of  the 
decline  and  fall  of  the  Jewish  state. 

Isaiah's  own  age  had  foreboded  the  necessity  of  exile 
for  Judah.  There  was  the  great  precedent  of  Samaria, 
and  Judah's  sin  was  not  less  than  her  sister's.  When 
the  authorities  at  Jerusalem  wished  to  put  Jeremiah  to 


30  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

death  for  the  heresy  of  predicting  the  ruin  of  the  sacred 
city,  it  was  pointed  out  in  his  defence  that  a  similar 
prediction  had  been  made  by  Micah,  the  contemporary 
of  Isaiah.  And  how  much  had  happened  since  then  ! 
The  triumph  of  Jehovah  in  701,  the  stronger  faith  and 
purer  practice,  which  had  followed  as  long  as  Hezekiah 
reigned,  gave  way  to  an  idolatrous  reaction  under  his 
successor  Manasseh.  This  reaction,  while  it  increased 
the  guilt  of  the  people,  by  no  means  diminished  their 
religious  fear.  They  carried  into  it  the  conscience  of 
their  former  puritanism — diseased,  we  might  say  deli- 
rious, but  not  dead.  Men  felt  their  sin  and  feared 
Heaven's  wrath,  and  rushed  headlong  into  the'  gross 
and  fanatic  exercises  of  idolatry,  in  order  to  wipe 
away  the  one  and  avert  the  other.  It  availed  nothing. 
After  an  absence  of  thirty  3^ears  the  Assyrian  arms 
returned  in  full  strength,  and  Manasseh  himself  was 
carried  captive  across  the  Euphrates.  But  penitence 
revived,  and  for  a  time  it  appeared  as  if  it  were  to  be 
at  last  valid  for  salvation.  Israel  made  huge  strides 
towards  their  ideal  life  of  a  good  conscience  and  out- 
ward prosperity.  Josiah,  the  pious,  came  to  the  throne. 
The  Book  of  the  Law  was  discovered  in  621,  and  king 
and  people  rallied  to  its  summons  with  the  utmost 
loyalty.  All  the  nation  stood  to  the  covenant.  The 
single  sanctuary  was  vindicated,  the  high  places  de- 
stroyed, the  land  purged  of  idols.  There  were  no 
great  military  triumphs,  but  Assyria,  so  long  the  ac- 
cepted scourge  of  God,  gave  signs  of  breaking  up  ;  and 
we  can  feel  the  vigour  and  self-confidence,  induced  by 
years  of  prosperity,  in  Josiah's  ambition  to  extend  his 
borders,  and  especially  in  his  daring  assault  upon 
Necho  of  Egypt  at  Megiddo,  when  Necho  passed  north 
to  the  invasion  of  Assyria.     Altogether,  it  was  a  people 


FROM  ISAIAH  TO  THE  FALL  OF  JERUSALEM.       31 

that  imagined  itself  righteous,  and  counted  upon  a 
righteous  God.  In  such  days  who  could  dream  of 
exile  ? 

But  in  608  the  ideal  was  shivered.  Israel  was 
threshed  at  Megiddo,  and  Josiah,  the  king  after  God's 
own  heart,  was  slain  on  the  field.  And  then  happened, 
what  happened  at  other  times  in  Israel's  history  when 
disillusion  of  this  kind  came  down.  The  nation  fell 
asunder  into  the  elements  of  which  it  was  ever  so 
strange  a  composition.  The  masses,  whose  conscience 
did  not  rise  beyond  the  mere  performance  of  the  Law, 
nor  their  view  of  God  higher  than  that  of  a  Patron  of 
the  state,  bound  by  His  covenant  to  reward  with 
material  success  the  loyalty  of  His  clients,  were  dis- 
appointed with  the  results  of  their  service  and  of  His 
providence.  Being  a  new  generation  from  Manasseh's 
time,  they  thought  to  give  the  strange  gods  another 
turn.  The  idols  were  brought  back,  and  after  the  dis- 
credit which  righteousness  received  at  Megiddo,  it 
would  appear  that  social  injustice  and  crime  of  many 
kinds  dared  to  be  very  bold.  Jehoahaz,  who  reigned 
for  three  months  after  Josiah,  and  Jehoiakim,  who 
succeeded  him,  were  idolaters.  The  loftier  few,  like 
Jeremiah,  had  never  been  deceived  by  the  people's  out- 
ward allegiance  to  the  Temple  or  the  Law,  nor  considered 
it  valid  either  to  atone  for  the  past  or  now  to  fulfil  the 
holy  demands  of  Jehovah  ;  and  were  confirmed  by 
the  disaster  at  Megiddo,  and  the  consequent  reaction 
to  idolatry,  in  the  stern  and  hopeless  views  of  the 
people  which  they  had  always  entertained.  They  kept 
reiterating  a  speedy  captivity.  Between  these  parties 
stood  the  formal  successors  of  earlier  prophets,  so  much 
the  slaves  of  tradition  that  they  had  neither  conscience 
for  their  people's  sins  nor  understanding  of  the  world 


32  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

around  them,  but  could  only  affirm  in  the  strength  of 
ancient  oracles  that  Zion  should  not  be  destroyed. 
Strange  is  it  to  see  how  this  party,  building  upon  the 
promises  of  Jehovah  through  a  prophet  like  Isaiah, 
should  be  taken  advantage  of  by  the  idolaters,  but 
scouted  by  Jehovah's  own  servants.  Thus  they  mingle 
and  conflict.  Who  indeed  can  distinguish  all  the  ele- 
ments of  so  ancient  and  so  rich  a  life,  as  they  chase, 
overtake  and  wrestle  with  each  other,  hurrying  down 
the  rapids  to  the  final  cataract  ?  Let  us  leave  them  for 
a  moment,  while  we  mark  the  catastrophe  itself.  They 
will  be  more  easily  distinguished  in  the  calm  below. 

It  was  from  the  North  that  Jeremiah  summoned  the 
vengeance  of  God  upon  Judah.  In  his  earlier  threats 
he  might  have  meant  the  Scythians;  but  by  605, 
when  Nebuchadrezzar,  Nabopolassar  of  Babylon's  son, 
the  rising  general  of  the  age,  defeated  Pharaoh  at 
Carchemish,  all  men  accepted  Jeremiah's  nomination 
for  this  successor  of  Assyria  in  the  lordship  of 
Western  Asia.  From  Carchemish  Nebuchadrezzar 
overran  Syria,  Jehoiakim  paid  tribute  to  him,  and 
Judah  at  last  felt  the  grip  of  the  hand  that  was  to  drag 
her  into  exile.  Jehoiakim  attempted  to  throw  it  off  in 
602  ;  but,  after  harassing  him  for  four  years  by  means 
of  some  allies,  Nebuchadrezzar  took  his  capital,  exe- 
cuted him,  suffered  Jehoiachin,  his  successor,  to  reign 
only  three  months,  took  Jerusalem  a  second  time,  and 
carried  off  to  Babylon  the  first  great  portion  of  the 
people.  This  was  in  598,  only  ten  years  from  the 
death  of  Josiah,  and  twenty-one  from  the  discovery  of 
the  Book  of  the  Law. 

The  exact  numbers  of  this  first  captivity  of  the  Jews 
it  is  impossible  to  determine.  The  annalist  sets  the 
soldiers  at  seven  thousand,  the  smiths  and  craftsmen 


FROM  ISAIAH  TO  THE  FALL  OF  JERUSALEM.       33 

at  one  thousand  ;  so  that,  making  allowance  for  other 
classes  whom  he  mentions,  the  grown  men  must  alone 
have  been  over  ten  thousand  ;  *  but  how  many  women 
went,  and  how  many  children — the  most  important 
factor  for  the  period  of  the  Exile  with  which  we  have 
to  deal — it  is  impossible  to  estimate.  The  total  number 
of  persons  can  scarcely  have  been  less  than  twenty- 
five  thousand.  More  important,  however,  than  their 
number  was  the  quality  of  these  exiles,  and  this  we  can 
easily  appreciate.  The  royal  family  and  the  court  were 
taken,  a  large  number  of  influential  persons,  the  mighty 
men  of  the  land,  or  what  must  have  been  nearly  all  the 
fighting  men,  with  the  necessary  artificers ;  priests  also 
went,  Ezekiel  among  them,  and  probably  representatives 
of  other  classes  not  mentioned  by  the  annalist.  That 
this  was  the  virtue  and  flower  of  the  nation  is  proved 
by  a  double  witness.  Not  only  did  the  citizens,  for  the 
remaining  ten  years  of  Jerusalem's  life,  look  to  these 
exiles  for  her  deliverance,  but  Jeremiah  himself  counted 
them  the  sound  half  of  Israel — a  basket  of  good  figs,  as 
he  expressed  it,  beside  a  basket  of  bad  ones.  They  were 
at  least  under  discipline,  but  the  remnant  of  Jerusalem 
persisted  in  the  wilfulness  of  the  past. 

For  although  Jeremiah  remained  in  the  city,  and  the 
nouse  of  David  and  a  considerable  population,  and 
although  Jeremiah  himself  held  a  higher  position  in 
public  esteem  since  the  vindication  of  his  word  by  the 
events  of  598,  yet  he  could  not  be  blind  to  the  un- 
changed character  of  the  people,  and  the  thorough 
doom  which  their  last  respite  had  only  more  evidently 


*  The  figure  actually  mentioned  in  2  Kings  xxiv.  14,  but,  as  Stade 
points  out  (Geschtchte,  p.  680),  vv.  14,  15  interrupt  the  narrative,  and 
may  have  been  intruded  here  from  the  account  of  the  later  captivity. 

VOL.    II.  3 


34  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

proved  to  be  inevitable.  Gangs  of  false  prophets,  both 
at  home  and  among  the  exiles,  might  predict  a  speedy 
return.  All  the  Jewish  abiUty  of  intrigue,  with  the 
lavish  promises  of  Egypt  and  frequent  embassies  from 
other  nations,  might  work  for  the  overthrow  of  Babylon. 
But  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  knew  better.  Across  the 
distance  which  now  separated  them  they  chanted,  as 
it  were  in  antiphon,  the  alternate  strophes  of  Judah's 
dirge.  Jeremiah  bade  the  exiles  not  to  remember 
Zion,  but  *'let  them  settle  down,"  he  said,  ''into  the 
life  of  the  land  they  are  in,  building  houses,  planting 
gardens,  and  begetting  children,  and  seek  the  peace  of  the 
city  whither  I  have  caused  you  to  be  carried  away  captives, 
and  pray  unto  Jehovah  for  it,  for  in  the  peace  thereof  ye 
shall  have  peace — the  Exile  shall  last  seventy  years." 
And  as  Jeremiah  in  Zion  blessed  Babylon,  so  Ezekiel 
in  Babylon  cursed  Zion,  thundering  back  that  Jerusalem 
must  be  utterly  W'asted  through  siege  and  famine, 
pestilence  and  captivity.  There  is  no  rush  of  hope 
through  Ezekiel.  His  expectations  are  all  distant.  He 
lives  either  in  mem^ory  or  in  cold  fancy.  His  pictures 
of  restoration  are  too  elaborate  to  mean  speedy  fulfil- 
ment. They  are  the  work  of  a  man  with  time  on  his 
hands ;  one  does  not  build  so  colossally  for  to-morrow. 
Thus  reinforced  from  abroad,  Jeremiah  proclaimed 
Nebuchadrezzar  as  the  servant  of  Jehovah,  and  sum- 
moned him  to  work  Jehovah's  doom  upon  the  city. 
The  predicted  blockade  came  in  the  ninth  year  of 
Zedekiah.  The  false  hopes  which  still  sustained  the 
people,  their  trust  in  Egypt,  the  arrival  of  an  Egyptian 
army  in  result  of  their  intrigue,  as  well  as  all  their 
piteous  bravery,  only  afforded  time  for  the  fulfilment 
of  the  terrible  details  of  their  penalty.  For  nearly 
eighteen  months  the  siege  closed  in — months  of  famine 


FROM  ISAIAH  TO  THE  FALL  OF  JERUSALEM.        35 

and  pestilence,  of  faction  and  quarrel  and  falling  away 
to  the  enemy.  Then  Jerusalem  broke  up.  The  be- 
siegers gained  the  northern  suburb  and  stormed  the 
middle  gate.  Zedekiah  and  the  army  burst  their  lines 
only  to  be  captured  on  an  aimless  flight  at  Jericho.  A 
few  weeks  more,  and  a  forlorn  defence  by  civilians  of 
the  interior  parts  of  the  city  was  at  last  overwhelmed. 
The  exasperated  besiegers  gave  her  up  to  fire — the 
house  of  Jehovah,  the  king's  house,  and  every  great  house 
— and  tore  to  the  stones  the  stout  walls  that  resisted 
the  conflagration.  As  the  city  was  levelled,  so  the 
citizens  were  dispersed.  A  great  number — and  among 
them  the  king's  family — were  put  to  death.  The  king 
himself  was  blinded,  and,  along  with  a  host  of  his 
subjects,  impossible  for  us  to  estimate,  and  with  all  the 
temple  furniture,  was  carried  to  Babylon.  A  few 
peasants  were  left  to  cultivate  the  land ;  a  few  superior 
personages  —  perhaps  such  as,  with  Jeremiah,  had 
favoured  the  Babylonians,  and  Jeremiah  was  among 
them — were  left  at  Mizpah  under  a  Jewish  viceroy. 
It  was  a  poor  apparition  of  a  state;  but,  as  if  the  very 
ghost  of  Israel  must  be  chased  from  the  land,  even 
this  small  community  was  broken  up,  and  almost  every 
one  of  its  members  fled  to  Egypt.  The  Exile  was 
complete. 


CHAPTER  III. 

WHAT  ISRAEL    TOOK  INTO   EXILE. 

BEFORE  we  follow  the  captives  along  the  roads 
that  lead  to  exile,  we  may  take  account  of  the 
spiritual  goods  which  they  carried  with  them,  and  were 
to  realise  in  their  retirement.  Never  in  all  history  did 
paupers  of  this  world  go  forth  more  richly  laden  with 
the  treasures  of  heaven. 

I.  First  of  all,  we  must  emphasize  and  define  their 
Monotheism.  We  must  emphasize  it  as  against  those 
who  would  fain  persuade  us  that  Israel's  monotheism 
was  for  the  most  part  the  product  of  the  Exile ;  we  must 
analyse  its  contents  and  define  its  limits  among  the 
people,  if  we  would  appreciate  the  extent  to  which  it 
spread  and  the  peculiar  temper  which  it  assumed,  as 
set  forth  in  the  prophecy  we  are  about  to  study. 

Idolatry  was  by  no  means  dead  in  Israel  at  the  fall 
of  Jerusalem.  On  the  contrary,  during  the  last  j^ears 
which  the  nation  spent  within  those  sacred  walls,  that 
had  been  so  miraculously  preserved  in  the  sight  of  the 
world  by  Jehovah,  idolatry  increased,  and  to  the  end 
remained  as  determined  and  fanatic  as  the  people's 
defence  of  Jehovah's  own  temple.  The  Jews  who  fled 
to  Egypt  applied  themselves  to  the  worship  of  the 
Queen  of  Heaven,  in  spite  of  all  the  remonstrances  of 
Jeremiah    and  him  they  carried  with  them,  not  because 


WHAT  ISRAEL   TOOK  INTO  EXILE.  37 

they  listened  to  him  as  the  prophet  of  the  One  True 
God,  but  superstitiously,  as  if  he  were  a  pledge  of  the 
favour  of  one  of  the  many  gods,  whom  they  were  anxious 
to  propitiate.  And  the  earliest  effort,  upon  which  we 
shall  have  to  follow  our  own  prophet,  is  the  effort  to 
crush  the  worship  of  images  among  the  Babylonian 
exiles.  Yet  when  Israel  returned  from  Babylon  the 
people  were  wholly  monotheist ;  when  Jerusalem  was 
rebuilt  no  idol  came  back  to  her. 

That  this  great  change  was  mainly  the  result  of  the 
residence  in  Babylon  and  of  truths  learned  there,  must 
be  denied  by  all  who  remember  the  creed  and  doctrine 
about  God,  which  in  their  Hterature  the  people  carried 
with  them  into  exile.  The  law  was  already  written, 
and  the  whole  nation  had  sworn  to  it :  Hear,  O  Israel, 
Jehovah  our  God ;  Jehovah  is  One,  and  thou  shall  worship 
Jehovah  thy  God  with  all  thine  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul, 
and  with  all  thy  strength.  These  words,  it  is  true,  may 
be  so  strictly  interpreted  as  to  mean  no  more  than  that 
there  was  one  God  for  Israel :  other  gods  might  exist, 
but  Jehovah  was  Sole  Deity  for  His  people.  It  is 
maintained  that  such  a  view  receives  some  support 
from  the  custom  of  prophets,  who,  while  they  affirmed 
Jehovah's  supremacy,  talked  of  other  gods  as  if  they 
were  real  existences.  But  argument  from  this  habit 
of  the  prophets  is  precarious :  such  a  mode  of  speech 
may  have  been  a  mere  accommodation  to  a  popular 
point  of  view.  And,  surely,  we  have  only  to  recall  what 
Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  had  uttered  concerning  Jehovah's 
Godhead,  to  be  persuaded  that  Israel's  monotheism, 
before  the  beginning  of  the  Exile,  was  a  far  more 
broad  and  spiritual  faith  than  the  mere  belief  that 
Jehovah  was  the  Sovereign  Deity  of  the  nation,  or 
the   satisfaction  of  the  desires  of  Jewish  hearts   alone. 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


Righteousness  was  not  coincident  with  Israel's  life  and 
interest ;  righteousness  was  universally  supreme,  and 
it  was  in  righteousness  that  Isaiah  saw  Jehovah 
exalted.*  There  is  no  more  prevailing  witness  to  the 
unity  of  God  than  the  conscience,  which  in  this  matter 
takes  far  precedence  of  the  intellect ;  and  it  was  on 
the  testimony  of  conscience  that  the  prophets  based 
Israel's  monotheism.  Yet  they  did  not  omit  to  enlist 
the  reason  as  well.  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  delight  to 
draw  deductions  from  the  reasonableness  of  Jehovah's 
working  in  nature  to  the  reasonableness  of  His  pro- 
cesses in  history, — analogies  which  could  not  fail  to 
impress  both  intellect  and  imagination  with  the  fact 
that  men  inhabit  a  universe,  that  One  is  the  will 
and  mind  which  works  in  all  things.  But  to  this 
training  of  conscience  and  reason,  the  Jews,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Exile,  felt  the  addition  of  another 
considerable  influence.  Their  history  lay  at  last  com- 
plete, and  their  conscience  was  at  leisure  from  the 
making  of  its  details  to  survey  it  as  a  whole.  That 
long  past,  seen  now  by  undazzled  eyes  from  under  the 
shadow  of  exile,  presented  through  all  its  changing 
fortunes  a  single  and  a  definite  course.  One  was  the 
intention  of  it,  one  its  judgement  from  first  to  last.  The 
Jew  saw  in  it  nothing  but  righteousness,  the  quality  of 
a  God,  who  spake  the  same  word  from  the  beginning, 
who  never  broke  His  w^ord,  and  who  at  last  had 
summoned  to  its  fulfilment  the  greatest  of  the  world- 
powers.  In  those  historical  books,  which  were  collected 
and  edited  during  the  Exile,  we  observe  each  of  the 
kings  and  generations  of  Israel,  in  their  turn,  confronted 
with  the  same  high  standard  of  fidelity  to  the  One  True 


*  See  vol.  i.,  p.  lOO  f. 


WHAT  ISRAEL   TOOK  INTO  EXILE.  39 

God  and  His  holy  Law.  The  regularity  and  rigour, 
with  which  they  are  thus  judged,  have  been  condemned 
by  some  critics  as  an  arbitrary  and  unfair  application 
of  the  standard  of  a  later  faith  to  the  conduct  of  ruder 
and  less  responsible  ages.  But,  apart  from  the  question 
of  historical  accuracy,  we  cannot  fail  to  remark  that  this 
method  of  writing  history  is  at  least  instinct  with  the 
Oneness  of  God,  and  the  unvarying  validity  of  His  Law 
from  generation  to  generation.  Israel's  God  was  the 
same,  their  conscience  told  them,  down  all  their  history ; 
but  now  as  He  summoned  one  after  another  of  the  great 
world-powers  to  do  His  bidding, — Assyria,  Babylon, 
Persia, — how  universal  did  He  prove  His  dominion 
to  be !  Unchanging  through  all  time.  He  was  surely 
omnipotent  through  all  space. 

This  short  review — in  which,  for  the  sake  of  getting 
a  complete  view  of  our  subject,  we  have  anticipated  a 
little — has  shown  that  Israel  had  enough  within  them- 
selves, in  the  teaching  of  their  prophets  and  in  the 
lessons  of  their  own  history,  to  account  for  that  con- 
summate expression  of  Jehovah's  Godhead,  which  is 
contained  in  our  prophet,  and  to  which  every  one  allows 
the  character  of  an  absolute  monotheism.  We  shall 
find  this,  it  is  true,  to  be  higher  and  more  comprehen- 
sive than  anything  which  is  said  about  God  in  pre- 
exilic  Scriptures.  The  prophet  argues  the  claims  of 
Jehovah,  not  only  with  the  ardour  that  is  born  of  faith, 
but  often  with  the  scorn  which  indicates  the  intellect  at 
work.  It  is  monotheism,  treated  not  only  as  a  practical 
belief  or  a  religious  duty,  but  as  a  necessary  truth  of 
reason  ;  not  only  as  the  secret  of  faith  and  the  special 
experience  of  Israel,  but  also  as  an  essential  conviction 
of  human  nature,  so  that  not  to  believe  in  One  God  is  a 
thing  irrational  and  absurd  for  Gentiles  as  well  as  Jews. 


40  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

God's  infinitude  in  the  works  of  creation,  His  universal 
providence  in  history,  are  preached  with  greater  power 
than  ever  before;  and  the  gods  of  the  nations  are 
treated  as  things,  in  whose  existence  no  reasonable 
person  can  possibly  believe.  In  short,  our  great 
prophet  of  the  Exile  has  already  learned  to  obey  the 
law  of  Deuteronomy  as  it  was  expounded  by  Christ. 
Deuteronomy  says,  Thoti  shall  love  Jehovah  thy  God 
with  all  thine  heart,  with  all  thy  soul,  and  ivith  all  thy 
strength.  Christ  added,  and  with  all  thy  mind.  This 
was  what  our  prophet  did.  He  held  his  monotheism 
with  all  his  mind.  We  shall  find  him  conscious  of  it, 
not  only  as  a  religious  aftection,  but  as  a  necessary  in- 
tellectual conviction ;  which  if  a  man  has  not,  he  is  less 
than  a  man.  Hence  the  scorn,  which  he  pours  upon 
the  idols  and  mythologies  of  his  conquerors.  Beside 
his  tyrants,  though  in  ph3'sical  strength  he  was  but  a 
worm  to  them,  the  Jew  felt  that  he  walked,  by  virtue 
of  his  faith  in  One  God,  their  intellectual  master. 

We  shall  see  all  this  illustrated  later  on.  Meantime, 
what  we  are  concerned  to  show  is,  that  there  is  enough 
to  account  for  this  high  faith  within  Israel  themselves — 
in  their  prophecy  and  in  the  lessons  of  their  history. 
And  where  indeed  are  we  to  be  expected  to  go  in 
search  of  the  sources  of  Israel's  monotheism,  if  not  to 
themselves  ?  To  the  Babylonians  ?  The  Babylonians 
had  nothing  spiritual  to  teach  to  Israel ;  our  prophet 
regards  them  with  scorn.  To  the  Persians,  who  broke 
across  Israel's  horizon  with  Cyrus  ?  Our  prophet's  high 
statement  of  monotheism  is  of  earlier  date  than  the 
advent  of  Cyrus  to  Babylon.  Nor  did  Cyrus,  when  he 
came,  give  any  help  to  the  faith,  for  in  his  public  edicts 
he  owned  the  gods  of  Babylon  and  the  God  of  Israel 
with  equal  care  and  equal  policy.     It  was  not  because 


WHAT  ISRAEL  TOOK  INTO  EXILE. 


Cyrus  and  his  Persians  were  monotheists,  that  our 
prophet  saw  the  sovereignty  of  Jehovah  vindicated,  but 
it  was  because  Jehovah  was  sovereign  that  the  prophet 
knew  the  Persians  would  serve  His  holy  purposes. 

2.  But  if  in  Deuteronomy  the  exiles  carried  with 
them  the  Law  of  the  One  God,  ^  they  preserved  in 
Jeremiah's  writings  what  may  be  called  the  charter  of 
the  Individual  Man.  Jeremiah  had  found  religion  in 
Judah  a  public  and  a  national  affair.  The  individual 
derived  his  spiritual  value  only  from  being  a  member 
of  the  nation,  and  through  the  public  exercises  of  the 
national  faith.  But,  partly  by  his  own  religious  experi- 
ence, and  partly  by  the  course  of  events,  Jeremiah  was 
enabled  to  accomplish  what  may  be  justly  described  as 
the  vindication  of  the  individual.  Of  his  own  separate 
value  before  God,  and  of  his  right  of  access  to  his 
Maker  apart  from  the  nation,  Jeremiah  himself  was 
conscious,  having  belonged  to  God  before  he  belonged  to 
his  mother,  his  family,  or  his  nation.  Be 'ore  I  found 
thee  in  the  belly  I  knew  thee,  and  before  thou  earnest  out 
of  the  womb  I  consecrated  thee.  His  whole  life  was  but 
the  lesson  of  how  one  man  can  be  for  God  and  all  the 
nation  on  the  other  side.  And  it  was  in  the  strength 
of  this  soHtary  experience,  that  he  insisted,  in  his  famous 
thirty-first  chapter,  on  the  individual  responsibility  of 
man  and  on  every  man's  immediate  communication  with 
God's  Spirit ;  and  that,  when  the  ruin  of  the  state 
was  imminent,  he  advised  each  of  his  friends  to  take  his 
own  life  out  of  it  for  a  prey.*  But  Jeremiah's  doctrine 
of  the  religious  value  and  independence  of  the  individual 
had  a  complement.  Though  the  prophet  felt  so  keenly 
his  separate  responsibility  and  right  of  access  to  God, 

*  Jer,  xlv. 


42  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

and  his  religious  independence  of  the  people,  he  never- 
theless clave  to  the  people  with  all  his  heart.  He  was 
not,  like  some  other  prophets,  outside  the  doom  he 
preached.  He  might  have  saved  himself,  for  he  had 
many  offers  from  the  Babylonians.  But  he  chose  to 
suffer  with  his  people — he,  the  saint  of  God,  with  the 
idolaters.  More  than  that,  it  m.ay  be  said  that  Jeremiah 
suffered  for  the  people.  It  was  not  they,  with  their 
dead  conscience  and  careless  mind,  but  he,  with  his 
tender  conscience  and  breaking  heart,  who  bore  the 
reproach  of  their  sins,  the  anger  of  the  Lord,  and  all  the 
agonizing  knowledge  of  his  country's  inevitable  doom. 
In  Jeremiah  one  man  did  suffer  for  the  people. 

In  our  prophecy,  which  is  absorbed  with  the  deliver- 
ance of  the  nation  as  a  whole,  there  was,  of  course,  no 
occasion  to  develop  Jeremiah's  remarkable  suggestions 
about  each  individual  soul  of  man.  In  fact,  these  sug- 
gestions were  germs,  which  remained  uncultivated  in 
Israel  till  Christ's  time.  JeremJah  himself  uttered  them, 
not  as  demands  for  the  moment,  but  as  ideals  that 
would  only  be  realised  when  the  New  Covenant  was 
made.*  Our  prophecy  has  nothing  to  say  about  them. 
But  that  figure,  which  Jeremiah's  life  presented,  of  One 
Individual — of  One  Individual  standing  in  moral  soli- 
tude over  against  the  whole  nation,  and  in  a  sense 
suffering  for  the  nation,  can  hardly  have  been  absent 
from  the  influences,  which  moulded  the  marvellous 
confession  of  the  people  in  the  fifty-third  chapter  of 
Isaiah,  where  they  see  the  solitary  servant  of  God  on 
one  side  and  themselves  on  the  other,  and  Jehovah 
made  to  light  on  him  the  iniquities  of  us  all.  It  is  true 
that  the  exiles  themselves  had  some  consciousness  of 

*  This  is  especially  clear  from  ch.  xxxi. 


IVHAT  ISRAEL  TOOK  INTO  EXILE.  43 

suffering  for  others.  Our  fathers,  cried  a  voice  in  their 
midst,  when  Jerusalem  broke  up,  Our  fathers  have  sinned, 
and  we  have  borne  their  iniquities.  But  Jeremiah  had 
been  a  willing  sufferer  for  his  people;  and  the  fifty-third 
chapter  is,  as  we  shall  see,  more  like  his  way  of  bearing 
his  generation's  guilt  for  love's  sake  than  their  way 
of  bearing  their  fathers'  guilt  in  the  inevitable  entail 
of  sin.* 

3.  To  these  beliefs  in  the  unity  of  God,  the  religious 
worth  of  the  individual  and  the  virtue  of  his  self- 
sacrifice,  we  must  add  some  experiences  of  scarcely 
less  value  rising  out  of  the  destruction  of  the 
MATERIAL  AND  POLITICAL  FORMS  —  the  temple,  the  city, 
the  monarchy — with  which  the  faith  of  Israel  had  been 
so  long  identified. 

Without  this  destruction,  it  is  safe  to  say,  those 
beliefs  could  not  have  assumed  their  purest  form. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  belief  in  the  unity  of  God. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  this  belief  was  immensely 
helped  in  Israel  by  the  abolition  of  all  the  provincial 
sanctuaries  under  Josiah,  by  the  limitation  of  Divine 
worship  to  one  temple  and  of  valid  sacrifice  to  one 
altar.  But  yet  it  was  well  that  this  temple  should 
enjoy  its  singular  rights  for  only  thirty  years  and  then 
be  destroyed.  For  a  monotheism,  however  lofty,  which 
depended  upon  the  existence  of  any  shrine,  however 
gloriously  vindicated  by  Divine  providence,  was  not  a 
purely  spiritual  faith.  Or,  again,  take  the  individual. 
The  individual  could  not  realise  how  truly  he  himself 
was  the  highest  temple  of  God,  and  God's  most  pleasing 


*  Having  read  through  the  Book  of  Jeremiah  once  again  since  I 
wrote  the  above  paragraph,  I  am  more  than  ever  impressed  with  the 
influence  of  his  life  upon  Isa.  xl.-lxvi. 


44  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

sacrifice  a  broken  and  a  contrite  heart,  till  the  routine 
of  legal  sacrifice  was  interrupted  and  the  ancient  altar 
torn  down.  Or,  once  more,  take  that  high,  ultimate 
doctrine  of  sacrifice,  that  the  most  inspiring  thing  for 
men,  the  most  effectual  propitiation  before  God,  is  the 
self-devotion  and  offering  up  of  a  free  and  reasonable 
soul,  the  righteous  for  the  unrighteous  —  how  could 
common  Jews  have  adequately  learned  that  truth,  in 
days  when,  according  to  immemorial  practice,  the 
bodies  of  bulls  and  goats  bled  daily  on  the  one  valid 
altar?  The  city  and  temple,  therefore,  went  up  in 
flames  that  Israel  might  learn  that  God  is  a  Spirit,  and 
dwelleth  not  in  a  house  made  with  hands  ;  that  men 
are  His  temple,  and  their  hearts  the  sacrifices  well- 
pleasing  in  His  sight ;  and  that  beyond  the  bodies 
and  blood  of  beasts,  with  their  daily  necessity  of  being 
offered,  He  was  preparing  for  them  another  Sacrifice,  of 
perpetual  and  universal  power,  in  the  voluntary  suffer- 
ings of  His  own  holy  Servant.  It  was  for  this  Servant, 
too,  that  the  monarchy,  as  it  were,  abdicated,  yielding 
up  to  Him  all  its  title  to  represent  Jehovah  and  to  save 
and  rule  Jehovah's  people. 

4.  Again,  as  we  have  already  hinted,  the  fall  of 
the  state  and  city  of  Jerusalem  gave  scope  to  Israel's 
MISSIONARY  CAREER.  The  conviction,  that  had  inspired 
many  of  Isaiah's  assertions  of  the  inviolableness  of 
Zion,  was  the  conviction  that,  if  Zion  were  overthrown 
and  the  last  remnant  of  Israel  uprooted  from  the  land, 
there  must  necessarily  follow  the  extinction  of  the  only 
true  testimony  to  the  living  God  which  the  world  con- 
tained. But  by  a  century  later  that  testimony  was 
firmly  secured  in  the  hearts  and  consciences  of  the 
people,  wheresoever  they  might  be  scattered ;  and  what 
was  now  needed  was   exactly  such  a  dispersion, — in 


WHAT  ISRAEL  TOOK  INTO  EXILE.  45 

order  that  Israel  might  become  aware  of  the  world  for 
whom  the  testimony  was  meant,  and  grow  expert  in 
the  methods  by  which  it  was  to  be  proclaimed.  Priest- 
hood has  its  human  as  well  as  its  Godward  side.  The 
latter  was  already  sufficiently  secured  for  Israel  by 
Jehovah's  age-long  seclusion  of  them  in  their  remote 
highlands — a  people  pecuHar  to  Himself.  But  now  the 
same  Providence  completed  its  purpose  by  casting  them 
upon  the  world.  They  mixed  with  men  face  to  face, 
or,  still  more  valuably  to  themselves,  on  a  level  with 
the  most  downtrodden  and  despised  of  the  peoples. 
With  no  advantage  but  the  truth,  they  met  the  other 
religions  of  the  world  in  argument,  debating  with  them 
upon  the  principles  of  a  common  reason  and  the  facts 
of  a  common  history.  They  learned  sympathy  with 
the  weak  things  of  earth.  They  discovered  that  their 
religion  could  be  taught.  But,  above  all,  they  became 
conscious  of  martyrdom,  the  indispensable  experience 
of  a  religion  that  is  to  prevail ;  and  they  realised  the 
supreme  influence  upon  men  of  a  love  which  sacrifices 
itself.  In  a  word,  Israel,  in  going  into  exile,  put  on 
humanity  with  all  its  consequences.  How  real  and 
thorough  the  process  was,  how  successful  in  perfecting 
their  priesthood,  may  be  seen  not  only  from  the  hopes 
and  obligations  towards  all  mankind,  which  burst  in  our 
prophecy  to  an  urgency  and  splendour  unmatched  else- 
where in  their  history,  but  still  more  from  the  fact  that 
when  the  Son  of  God  Himself  took  flesh  and  became 
man,  there  were  no  words  oftener  upon  His  lips  to 
describe  His  experience  and  commission,  there  are  no 
passages  which  more  clearly  mirror  His  work  for  the 
world,  than  the  words  and  the  passages  in  which  these 
Jews  of  the  Exile,  stripped  to  their  bare  humanity, 
relate  their  sufferings  or  exult  in  their  destiny  that 
should  follow. 


46  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

5.  But  with  their  temple  in  ruins,  and  all  the  world 
before  them  for  the  service  of  God,  the  Jews  go 
forth  to  exile  upon  the  distinct  promise  of  return. 
The  material  form  of  their  religion  is  suspended,  not 
abolished.  Let  them  feel  religion  in  purely  spiritual 
aspects,  unassisted  by  sanctuary  or  ritual;  let  them 
look  upon  the  world  and  the  oneness  of  men ;  let  them 
learn  all  God's  scope  for  the  truth  He  has  entrusted 
to  them, — and  then  let  them  gather  back  again  and 
cherish  their  new  experience  and  ideas  for  yet  awhile 
in  the  old  seclusion.  Jehovah's  discipline  of  them  as 
a  nation  is  not  yet  exhausted.  They  are  no  mere  band 
of  pilgrims  or  missionaries,  with  the  world  for  their 
home ;  they  are  still  a  people,  with  their  own  bit  of  the 
earth.  If  we  keep  this  in  mind,  it  will  explain  certain 
apparent  anomalies  in  our  prophecy.  In  all  the  writ- 
ings of  the  Exile  the  reader  is  confused  by  a  strange 
mingling  of  the  spiritual  and  the  material,  the  universal 
and  the  local.  The  moral  restoration  of  the  people  to 
pardon  and  righteousness  is  identified  with  their  political 
restoration  to  Judah  and  Jerusalem.  They  have  been 
separated  from  ritual  in  order  to  cultivate  a  more 
spiritual  religion,  but  it  is  to  this  that  a  restoration  to 
ritual  is  promised  for  a  reward.  While  Jeremiah  insists 
upon  the  free  and  immediate  communication  of  every 
believer  with  Jehovah,  Ezekiel  builds  a  more  exclusive 
priesthood,  a  more  elaborate  system  of  worship.  Within 
our  prophecy,  while  one  voice  deprecates  a  house  for 
God  built  with  hands,  affirming  that  Jehovah  dwells 
with  every  one  who  is  of  a  poor  and  contrite  spirit, 
other  voices  dwell  fondly  on  the  prospect  of  the  new 
temple  and  exult  in  its  material  glory.  This  double 
line  of  feeling  is  not  merely  due  to  the  presence  in 
Israel  of  those  two  opposite  tempers  of  mind,  which  so 


IVHAT  ISRAEL   TOOK  INTO  EXILE.  47 

naturally  appear  in  every  national  literature.  But  a 
special  purpose  of  God  is  in  it.  Dispersed  to  obtain 
more  spiritual  ideas  of  God  and  man  and  the  world, 
Israel  must  be  gathered  back  again  to  get  these  by 
heart,  to  enshrine  them  in  literature,  and  to  transmit 
them  to  posterity,  as  they  could  alone  be  securely 
transmitted,  in  the  memories  of  a  nation,  in  the  liturgies 
and  canons  of  a  living  Church. 

Therefore  the  Jews,  though  torn  for  their  discipline 
from  Jerusalem,  continued  to  identify  themselves  more 
passionately  than  ever  with  their  desecrated  city.  A 
prayer  of  the  period  exclaims  :  Thy  saints  take  pleasure 
in  her  stones  j  and  her  dust  is  dear  to  them*  The  exiles 
proved  this  by  taking  her  name.  Their  prophets 
addressed  them  as  Zion  and  Jerusalem.  Scattered  and 
leaderless  groups  of  captives  in  a  far-off  land,  they  were 
still  that  City  of  God.  She  had  not  ceased  to  be ; 
ruined  and  forsaken  as  she  lay,  she  was  yet  graven  on 
the  palms  of  JehovaJUs  hands;  and  her  walls  were  con- 
tinually before  Him.  t  The  exiles  kept  up  the  register 
of  her  families ;  they  prayed  towards  her ;  they  looked 
to  return  to  build  her  bulwarks ;  they  spent  long  hours 
of  their  captivity  in  tracing  upon  the  dust  of  that  foreign 
land  the  groundplan  of  her  restored  temple. 


With  such  beliefs  in  God  and  man  and  sacrifice, 
with  such  hopes  and  opportunities  for  their  world- 
mission,  but  also  with  such  a  bias  back  to  the  material 
Jerusalem,  did  Israel  pass  into  exile. 

*  Psalm  cii,  14.  f  Isa.  xlix.  16. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

ISRAEL    IN    EXILE. 
From  589  till  about  550  b.c. 

IT  IS  remarkable  how  completely  the  sound  of  the 
march  from  Jerusalem  to  Babylon  has  died  out 
of  Jewish  history.  It  was  an  enormous  movement : 
twice  over  within  ten  3^ears,  ten  thousand  Jews,  at  the 
very  least,  must  have  trodden  the  highway  to  the 
Euphrates ;  and  yet,  except  for  a  doubtful  verse  or 
two  in  the  Psalter,  they  have  left  no  echo  of  their 
passage.  The  sufferings  of  the  siege  before,  the 
remorse  and  lamentation  of  the  Exile  after,  still  pierce 
our  ears  through  the  Book  of  Lamentations  and  the 
Psalms  by  the  rivers  of  Babylon.  We  know  exactly 
how  the  end  was  fulfilled.  We  see  most  vividly  the 
shifting  panorama  of  the  siege, — the  city  in  famine, 
under  the  assault,  and  in  smoke  ;  upon  the  streets  the 
pining  children,  the  stricken  princes,  the  groups  of  men 
with  sullen,  famine-black  faces,  the  heaps  of  slain, 
mothers  feeding  on  the  bodies  of  the  infants  whom 
their  sapless  breasts  could  not  keep  alive ;  by  the 
walls  the  hanging  and  crucifixion  of  multitudes,  with 
all  the  fashion  of  Chaldean  cruelty,  the  delicate  and 
the  children  stumbling  under  heavy  loads,  no  survivor 
free  from  the  pollution  of  blood.  Upon  the  hills 
around,  the  neighbouring  tribes  are  gathered  to  jeer 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  49 

at  the  day  of  Jerusalem,  and  to  cut  off  her  fugitives  ; 
we  even  see  the  departing  captives  turn,  as  the  worm 
turns,  to  curse  those  children  of  Edom.  But  there  the 
vision  closes.  Was  it  this  hot  hate  which  Winded 
them  to  the  sights  of  the  way,  or  that  weariness  and 
depression  among  strange  scenes,  that  falls  upon  all 
unaccustomed  caravans,  and  has  stifled  the  memory 
of  nearly  every  other  great  historical  march  ?  The 
roads  which  the  exiles  traversed  were  of  immemorial 
use  in  the  history  of  their  fathers ;  almost  every  day 
they  must  have  passed  names  which,  for  at  least  two 
centuries,  had  rung  in  the  market-place  of  Jerusalem 
— the  Way  of  the  Sea,  across  Jordan,  Galilee  of  the 
Gentiles,  round  Hermon,  and  past  Damascus ;  between 
the  two  Lebanons,  past  Hamath,  and  past  Arpad  ;  or 
less  probably  by  Tadmor-in-the-Wilderness  and  Rezeph, 
— till  they  reached  the  river  on  which  the  national  ambi- 
tion had  lighted  as  the  frontier  of  the  Messianic  Empire, 
and  whose  rolling  greatness  had  so  often  proved  the 
fascination  and  despair  of  a  people  of  uncertain  brooks 
and  trickling  aqueducts.  Crossing  the  Euphrates  by 
one  of  its  numerous  passages — either  at  Carchemish, 
if  they  struck  the  river  so  high,  or  at  the  more  usual 
Thapsacus,  Tiphsah,  the  passage,  where  Xenophon 
crossed  with  his  Greeks,  or  at  some  other  place — the 
caravans  must  have  turned  south  across  the  Habor, 
on  whose  upper  banks  the  captives  of  Northern  Israel 
had  been  scattered,  and  then  have  traversed  the  pictur- 
esque country  of  Aram-Naharaim,  past  Circesium  and 
Rehoboth-of-the-River,  and  many  another  ancient  place 
mentioned  in  the  story  of  the  Patriarchs,  till  through 
dwindling  hills  they  reached  His — that  marvellous  site 
which  travellers  praise  as  one  of  the  great  view-points 
of  the  world — and  looked  out  at  last  upon  the  land  of 

VOL.    II.  4 


50  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

their  captivity,  the  boundless,  almost  level  tracts  of 
Chaldea,  the  first  home  of  the  race,  the  traditional 
Garden  of  Eden.  But  of  all  that  we  are  told  nothing. 
Every  eye  in  the  huge  caravans  seems  to  have  been  as 
the  eyes  of  the  blinded  king  whom  they  carried  with 
them, — able  to  v;eep,  but  not  to  see. 

One  fact,  however,  was  too  large  to  be  missed  by 
these  sad,  wayworn  men ;  and  it  has  left  traces  on 
their  literature.  In  passing  from  home  to  exile,  the 
Jews  passed  from  the  hills  to  the  plain.  They  were 
highlanders.  Jerusalem  lies  four  thousand  feet  above 
the  sea.  From  its  roofs  the  skyline  is  mostly  a  line 
of  hills.  To  leave  the  city  on  almost  any  side  you 
have  to  descend.  The  last  monuments  of  their  father- 
land, on  which  the  emigrants'  eyes  could  have  lingered, 
were  the  high  crests  of  Lebanon;  the  first  prospect 
of  their  captivity  was  a  monotonous  level.  The 
change  was  the  more  impressive,  that  to  the  hearts 
of  Hebrews  it  could  not  fail  to  be  sacramental.  From 
the  mountains  came  the  dew  to  their  native  crofts — 
the  dew  which,  of  all  earthly  blessings,  was  likest 
God's  grace.  For  their  prophets,  the  ancient  hills 
had  been  the  symbols  of  Jehovah's  faithfulness.  In 
leaving  their  highlands,  therefore,  the  Jews  not  only  left 
the  kind  of  country  to  which  their  habits  were  most 
adapted  and  all  their  natural  affections  clung ;  they  left 
the  chosen  abode  of  God,  the  most  evident  types  of  His 
grace,  the  perpetual  witnesses  to  His  covenant.  Ezekiel 
constantly  employs  the  mountains  to  describe  his  father- 
land. But  it  is  far  more  with  a  sacramental  longing 
than  a  mere  homesickness  that  a  psalmist  of  the  Exile 
cries  out,  /  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  to  the  hills:  from 
whence  cometh  mine  help  ?  or  that  our  prophet  exclaims  : 
How  beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the  feet  of  him 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  5 1 

that  brill geth  good  tidings,  that  pttblisheth  peace ;  that  saith 
unto  Zton,  Thy  God  reigneth. 

By  the  route  sketched  above,  it  is  at  least  seven 
hundred  miles  from  Jerusalem  to  Babylon — a  distance 
which,  when  we  take  into  account  that  many  of 
the  captives  walked  in  fetters,  cannot  have  occupied 
them  less  than  three  months.  We  may  form  some 
conception  of  the  aspect  of  the  caravans  from  the 
transportations  of  captives  which  are  figured  on  the 
Assyrian  monuments,  as  in  the  Assyrian  basement 
in  the  British  Museum.  From  these  it  appears  as  if 
families  were  not  separated,  but  marched  together. 
Mules,  asses,  camels,  ox- waggons,  and  the  captives 
themselves  carried  goods.  Children  and  women  suck- 
ling infants  were  allowed  to  ride  on  the  waggons.  At 
intervals  fully- armed  soldiers  walked  in  pairs.* 

I. 

Mesopotamia,  the  land  "in  the  middle  of  the  rivers," 
Euphrates  and  Tigris,  consists  of  two  divisions,  an 
upper  and  a  lower.  The  dividing  line  crosses  from 
near  Hit  or  His  on  the  Euphrates  to  below  Samarah 
on  the  Tigris.  Above  this  line  the  country  is  a  gently 
undulating  plain  of  secondary  formation  at  some  ele- 
vation above  the  sea.  But  Lower  Mesopotamia  is 
absolutely  flat  land,   an    unbroken  stretch    of  alluvial 

*  If  we  would  construct  for  ourselves  some  more  definite  idea  of 
that  long  march  from  Judah  to  Babylon,  we  might  assist  our  imagina- 
tion by  the  details  of  the  only  other  instance  on  so  great  a  scale  of 
"exile  b}'  administrative  process  " — the  transportation  to  Siberia  which 
the  Russian  Government  effects  (it  is  said,  on  good  authority)  to  the 
extent  of  eighteen  thousand  persons  a  year.  Every  week  throughout 
the  3'ear  marching  parties,  three  to  four  hundred  strong,  leave  Tomsk 
lor  Irkutsk,  doing  twelve  to  twenty  miles  daily  in  fetters,  with  twenty- 
four  hours'  rest  every  third  day,  or  three  hundred  and  thirty  miles  in 
a  month  {Century  Magazine,  Nov.  1888). 


52  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

soil,  scarcely  higher  than  the  Persian  Gulf,  upon  which 
it  steadily  encroaches.  Chaldea  was  confined  to  this 
Lower  Mesopotamia,  and  was  not  larger,  Rawlinson 
estimates,  than  the  kingdom  of  Denmark.*  It  is  the 
monotonous  level  which  first  impresses  the  traveller ; 
but  if  the  season  be  favourable,  he  sees  this  only  as 
the  theatre  of  vast  and  varied  displays  of  colour,  which 
all  visitors  vie  with  one  another  in  describing  :  "  It  is 
like  a  rich  carpet;"  ^'emerald  green,  enamelled  with 
flowers  of  every  hue ; "  "  tall  wild  grasses  and  broad 
extents  of  waving  reeds;"  ^' acres  of  water-lilies;" 
"acres  of  pansies."  There  was  no  such  country  in 
ancient  times  for  wheat,  barley,  millet,  and  sesame ;  t 
tamarisks,  poplars,  and  palms;  here  and  there  heavy 
jungle ;  with  flashing  streams  and  canals  thickly  athwart 
the  whole,  and  all  shining  the  more  brilliantly  for  the 
interrupting  patches  of  scurvy,  nitrous  soil,  and  the 
grey  sandy  setting  of  the  desert  with  its  dry  scrub. 
The  possible  fertility  of  Chaldea  is  incalculable.  But 
there  are  drawbacks.  Bounded  to  the  north  by  so  high 
a  tableland,  to  the  south  and  south-west  by  a  super- 
heated gulf  and  broad  desert,  Mesopotamia  is  the 
scene  of  violent  changes  of  atmosphere.  The  languor 
of  the  flat  country,  the  stagnancy  and  sultriness  of  the 
air,  of  which  not  only  foreigners  but  the  natives  them- 
selves complain,  is  suddenly  invaded  by  southerly 
winds,  of  tremendous  force  and  laden  with  clouds  of 
fine  sand,  which  render  the  air  so  dense  as  to  be  suffb- 

*  For  the  above  details,  see  Rawlinson's  Five  Great  Monarchies  of  the 
Ancient  Eastern  World,  vol.  i, 

f  Herodotus,  Bk.  1. ;  "Memoirs  by  Commander  James  Felix  Jones, 
I.  N.,"  in  Selections  from  the  Records  of  the  Bombay  Government, 
No.  XLIII.,  New  Series,  1857  j  Ainsworth's  Euphrates  Valley  Expedi- 
tion ;  Layard's  Nineveh, 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  53 


eating,  and  "  produce  a  lurid  red  haze  intolerable  to  the 
eyes."  Thunderstorms  are  frequent,  and  there  are 
very  heavy  rains.  But  the  winds  are  the  most  tre- 
mendous. In  such  an  atmosphere  we  may  perhaps 
discover  the  original  shapes  and  sounds  of  Ezekiel's 
turbulent  visions — the  fiery  wheels;  the  great  cloud  with  a 
fire  infolding  itself;  the  colour  of  amber ^  with  sapphire,  or 
lapis  lazuli, breaking  through;  the  sound  of  a  great  rushing. 
Also  the  Mesopotamian  floods  are  colossal.  The  increase 
of  both  Tigris  and  Euphrates  is  naturally  more  violent 
and  irregular  than  that  of  the  Nile.*  Frequent  risings 
of  these  rivers  spread  desolation  with  inconceivable 
rapidity,  and  they  ebb  only  to  leave  pestilence  behind 
them.  If  civilisation  is  to  continue,  there  is  need  of 
vast  and  incessant  operations  on  the  part  of  man. 

Thus,  both  by  its  fertility  and  by  its  violence,  this 
climate — before  the  curse  of  God  fell  on  those  parts  of 
the  world — tended  to  develop  a  numerous  and  indus- 
trious race  of  men,  whose  numbers  were  swollen  from 
time  to  time  both  by  forced  and  by  voluntary  immigra- 
tion. The  population  must  have  been  very  dense. 
The  triumphal  lists  of  Assyrian  conquerors  of  the  land, 
as  well  as  the  rubbish  mounds  which  to-day  cover  its 
surface,  testify  to  innum.erable  villages  and  towns  ;  while 
the  connecting  canals  and  fortifications,  by  the  making 
of  them  and  the  watching  of  them,  must  have  filled  even 
the  rural  districts  with  the  hum  and  activity  of  men. 
Chaldea,  however,  did  not  draw  all  her  greatness  from 
herself  There  was  immense  traffic  with  East  and 
West,  between  which  Babylon  lay,  for  the  greater  part 
of  antiquity,  the  world's  central  market  and  exchange. 

*  Perrot  and  Chipiez,  Histoire  de  VArt  d^ Anttquite,  vol,  ii. :  Assyrie 
p.  9. 


54  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

The  city  was  practically  a  port  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  by 
canals  from  which  vessels  reached  her  wharves  direct 
from  Arabia,  India  and  Africa.  Down  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates  rafts  brought  the  produce  of  Armenia  and  the 
Caucasus ;  but  of  greater  importance  than  even  these 
rivers  were  the  roads,  which  ran  from  Sardis  to  Shushan, 
traversed  Media,  penetrated  Bactria  and  India,  and  may 
be  said  to  have  connected  the  Jaxartes  and  the  Ganges 
with  the  Nile  and  the  harbours  of  the  ^Egean  Sea. 
These  roads  all  crossed  Chaldea  and  met  at  Babylon. 
Together  with  the  rivers  and  ocean  highways,  they 
poured  upon  her  markets  the  traffic  of  the  whole  ancient 
world. 

It  was,  in  short,  the  very  centre  of  the  world — the 
most  populous  and  busy  region  of  His  earth — to  which 
God  sent  His  people  for  their  exile.  The  monarch, 
who  transplanted  them,  was  the  genius  of  Babylonia 
incarnate.  The  chief  soldier  of  his  generation,  Nebu- 
chadrezzar will  live  in  history  as  one  of  the  greatest 
builders  of  all  time.  But  he  fought  as  he  built — that 
he  might  traffic.  His  ambition  was  to  turn  the  trade 
with  India  from  the  Red  Sea  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  and 
he  thought  to  effect  this  by  the  destruction  of  Tyre, 
by  the  transportation  of  Arab  and  Nabathean  merchants 
to  Babylon,  and  by  the  deepening  and  regulation  of  the 
river  between  Babylon  and  the  sea. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  Nebuchadrezzar  carried  the 
Jews  to  Babylon  not  only  for  political  reasons,  but  in 
order  to  employ  them  upon  those  large  works  of  irriga- 
tion and  the  building  of  cities,  for  which  his  ambition 
required  hosts  of  labourers.  Thus  the  exiles  were 
planted,  neither  in  mihtary  prisons  nor  in  the  comparative 
isolation  of  agricultural  colonies,  but  just  where  Baby- 
Ionian  life  was  most  busy,  where  they  were  forced  to 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE,  55 


share  and  contribute  to  it,  and  could  not  help  feeling  the 
daily  infection  of  their  captors'  habits.  Do  not  let  us 
forget  this.  It  will  explain  much  in  what  we  have  to 
study.  It  will  explain  how  the  captivity,  which  God 
inflicted  upon  the  Jews  as  a  punishment,  might  become 
in  time  a  new  sin  to  them,  and  why,  when  the  day  of 
redemption  arrived,  so  many  forgot  that  their  citizenship 
was  in  Zion,  and  clung  to  the  traffic  and  the  offices  of 
Babylon. 

The  majority  of  the  exiles  appear  to  have  been  settled 
within  the  city,  or,  as  it  has  been  more  correctly  called, 
"the  fortified  district,"  of  Babylon  itself.  Their  mis- 
tress was  thus  constantly  before  them,  at  once  their 
despair  and  their  temptation.  Lady  of  Kingdoms 
she  lifted  herself  to  heaven  from  broad  wharves  and 
ramparts,  by  wide  flights  of  stairs  and  terraces,  high 
walls  and  hanging  gardens,  pyramids  and  towers — so 
colossal  in  her  buildings,  so  imperially  lavish  of  space 
between  !  No  wonder  that  upon  that  vast,  far-spreading 
architecture,  upon  its  great  squares  and  between  its 
high  portals  guarded  by  giant  bulls,  the  Jew  felt 
himself,  as  he  expressed  it,  but  a  poor  worm.  If, 
even  as  they  stand  in  our  museums,  captured  and 
catalogued,  one  feels  as  if  one  crawled  in  the  presence 
of  the  fragments  of  these  striding  monsters,  with  how 
much  more  of  the  feeling  of  the  worm  must  the  abject 
members  of  that  captive  nation  have  writhed  before  the 
face  of  the  city,  which  carried  these  monsters  as  the 
mere  ornaments  of  her  skirts,  and  rose  above  all 
kingdoms  with  her  strong  feet  upon  the  poor  and  the 
meek  of  the  earth  ? 

Ah,  the  despair  of  it!  To  see  her  every  day  so 
glorious,  to  be  forced  to  help  her  ceaseless  growth, — 
and   to  think  how  Jerusalem,   the  daughter  of  Zion, 


S6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

lay  forsaken  in  ruins !  Yet  the  despair  sometimes 
gave  way  to  temptation.  There  was  not  an  outline 
or  horizon  visible  to  the  captive  Jew,  not  a  figure  in 
the  motley  crowds  in  which  he  moved,  but  must  have 
fascinated  him  with  the  genius  of  his  conquerors.  In 
that  level  land  no  mountain,  with  its  witness  of  God, 
broke  the  skyline  ;  but  the  work  of  man  was  every- 
where :  curbed  and  scattered  rivers,  artificial  mounds, 
buildings  of  brick,  gardens  torn  from  their  natural  beds 
and  hung  high  in  air  by  cunning  hands  to  please  the 
taste  of  a  queen ;  lavish  wealth  and  force  and  cleverness, 
all  at  the  command  of  one  human  will.  The  signature 
ran  across  the  whole,  "/  have  done  this,  and  with 
mine  own  hand  have  I  gotten  mxe  my  wealth ; "  and  all 
the  nations  of  the  earth  came  and  acknowledged  the 
signature,  and  worshipped  the  great  city.  It  was 
fascinating  merely  to  look  on  such  cleverness,  success 
and  self-confidence;  and  who  was  the  poor  Jew  that 
he,  too,  should  not  be  drawn  with  the  intoxicated 
nations  to  the  worship  of  this  glory  that  filled  his 
horizon?  If  his  eyes  rose  higher,  and  from  these 
enchantments  of  men  sought  refuge  in  the  heavens 
above,  were  not  even  they  also  a  Babylonian  realm  ? 
Did  not  the  Chaldean  claim  the  great  lights  there  for 
his  patron  gods?  were  not  the  movements  of  sun, 
moon,  and  planets  the  secret  of  his  science  ?  did  not 
the  tyrant  believe  that  the  very  stars  in  their  courses 
fought  for  him  ?  And  he  was  vindicated ;  he  was 
successful ;  he  did  actually  rule  the  world.  There 
seemed  to  be  no  escape  from  the  enchantments  of  this 
sorceress  city,  as  the  prophets  called  her,  and  it  is 
not  wonderful  that  so  many  Jews  fell  victims  to  her 
worldliness  and  idolatry. 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  57 


II. 

The  social  condition  of  the  Jews  in  Exile  is  somewhat 
obscure,  and  yet,  both  in  connection  with  the  date  and 
with  the  exposition  of  some  portions  of  "  Second 
Isaiah,"  it  is  an  element  of  the  greatest  importance, 
of  which  we  ought  to  have  as  definite  an  idea  as 
possible. 

What  are  the  facts?  By  far  the  most  significant 
is  that  which  faces  us  at  the  end  of  the  Exile.  There, 
some  sixty  years  after  the  earlier,  and  some  fifty 
years  after  the  later,  of  Nebuchadrezzar's  two  deporta- 
tions, we  find  the  Jews  a  largely  multiplied  and  still 
regularly  organised  nation,  with  considerable  property 
and  decided  political  influence.  Not  more  than  forty 
thousand  can  have  gone  into  exile,  but  forty-two 
thousand  returned,  and  yet  left  a  large  portion  of  the 
nation  behind  them.  The  old  families  and  clans  sur- 
vived ;  the  social  ranks  were  respected  ;  the  rich  still 
held  slaves ;  and  the  former  menials  of  the  temple 
could  again  be  gathered  together.  Large  subscriptions 
were  raised  for  the  pilgrimage,  and  for  the  restoration 
of  the  temple ;  a  great  host  of  cattle  was  taken.  To 
such  a  state  of  affairs  do  we  see.  any  traces  leading 
up  through  the  Exile  itself?     We  do. 

The  first  host  of  exiles,  the  captives  of  598,  com- 
prised, as  we  have  seen,  the  better  classes  of  the  nation, 
and  appear  to  have  enjoyed  considerable  independence. 
They  were  not  scattered,  like  the  slaves  in  North 
America,  as  dom.estic  bondsmen  over  the  surface  of  the 
land.  Their  condition  must  have  much  more  closely 
resembled  that  of  the  better-treated  exiles  in  Siberia ; 
though  of  course,  as  we  have  seen,  it  was  not  a  Siberia, 
but  the  centre  of  civilisation,  to  which  they  were  banished. 


58  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

They  remained  in  communities,  with  their  own  official 
heads,  and  at  liberty  to  consult  their  prophets.  They 
were  sufficiently  in  touch  with  one  another,  and  suffi- 
ciently numerous,  for  the  enemies  of  Babylon  to  regard 
them  as  a  considerable  political  influence,  and  to  treat 
with  them  for  a  revolution  against  their  captors.  But 
Ezekiel's  strong  condemnation  of  this  intrigue  exhibits 
their  leaders  on  good  terms  with  the  government. 
Jeremiah  bade  them  throw  themselves  into  the  life  of 
the  land ;  buy  and  sell,  and  increase  their  families  and 
property.  At  the  same  time,  we  cannot  but  observe  that 
it  is  only  religious  sins,  with  which  Ezekiel  upbraids 
them.  When  he  speaks  of  civic  duty  or  social  charity, 
he  either  refers  to  their  past  or  to  the  life  of  the 
remnant  still  in  Jerusalem.  There  is  every  reason  to 
believe,  therefore,  that  this  captivity  was  an  honourable 
and  an  easy  one.  The  captives  may  have  brought 
some  property  with  them ;  they  had  leisure  for  the 
pursuit  of  business  and  for  the  study  and  practice  of 
their  religion.  Some  of  them  suffered,  of  course,  from 
the  usual  barbarity  of  Oriental  conquerors,  and  were 
made  eunuchs  ;  some,  by  their  learning  and  abstinence, 
rose  to  high  positions  in  the  court.*  Probably  to  the 
end  of  the  Exile  they  remained  the  good figs^  as  Jeremiah 
had  called  them.  Theirs  was,  perhaps,  the  literary 
work  of  the  Exile ;  and  theirs,  too,  may  have  been  the 
wealth  which  rebuilt  Jerusalem. 

But  it  was  different  with  the  second  captivity,  of  589. 
After  the  famine,  the  burning  of  the  city,  and  the  pro- 
longed march,  this  second  host  of  exiles  must  have 
reached  Babylonia  in  an  impoverished  condition.  They 
were  a  lower  class  of  men.     They  had  exasperated  their 

*  The  Book  of  Daniel. 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  59 


conquerors,  who,  before  the  march  began,  subjected 
many  of  them  to  mutilation  and  cruel  death ;  and  it  is, 
doubtless,  echoes  of  their  experience  which  we  find  in 
the  more  bitter  complaints  of  our  prophet.  This  is  a 
people  robbed  and  spoiled;  all  of  them  snared  in  holes ,  and 
hid  in  prison-houses :  they  are  for  a  prey^  and  for  a  spoil. 
ThoUy  that  is,  Babylon,  didst  show  them  no  mercy; 
upon  the  aged  hast  thou  very  heavily  laid  thy  yoke.* 
Nebuchadrezzar  used  them  for  his  building,  as  Pharaoh 
had  used  their  forefathers.  Some  of  them,  or  of  their 
countrymen  who  had  reached  Babylonia  before  them, 
became  the  domestic  slaves  and  chattels  of  their  con- 
querors. Among  the  contracts  and  bills  of  sale  of  this 
period  we  find  the  cases  of  slaves  with  apparently 
Jewish  names. t 

In  short,  the  state  of  the  Jews  in  Babylonia  resembled 
what  seems  to  have  been  their  fortune  wherever  they 
have  settled  in  a  foreign  land.  Part  of  them  despised 
and  abused,  forced  to  labour  or  overtaxed ;  part  left 
alone  to  cultivate  literature  or  to  gather  wealth.  Some 
treated  with  unusual  rigour — and  perhaps  a  few  of 
these  with  reason,  as  dangerous  to  the  government  of 
the  land — but  some  also,  by  the  versatile  genius  of  their 
race,  advancing  to  a  high  place  in  the  political  confidence 
of  their  captors. 

Their  application  to  literature,  to  their  religion,  and 
to  commerce  must  be  specially  noted. 

I.  Nothing  is  more  striking  in  the  writings  of  Ezekiel 
than  the  air  of  large  leisure  which  invests  them. 
Ezekiel  lies  passive ;  he  broods,  gazes  and  builds  his 


*  Isa.  xlii.  22,  xlvii.  6. 

f  Records  of  the  Past,  second   series,  vol.  i.,  M.  Oppert's  Trans- 
lations. 


6o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

visions  up,  in  a  fashion  like  none  of  his  terser  pre- 
decessors ;  for  he  had  time  on  his  hands,  not  available 
to  them  in  days  when  the  history  of  the  nation  was  still 
running.  Ezekiel's  style  swells  to  a  greater  fulness  of 
rhetoric ;  his  pictures  of  the  future  are  elaborated  with 
the  most  minute  detail.  Prophets  before  him  were 
speakers,  but  he  is  a  writer.  Many  in  Israel  besides 
Ezekiel  took  advantage  of  the  leisure  of  the  Exile  to 
the  great  increase  and  arrangement  of  the  national 
literature.  Some  Assyriologists  have  lately  written, 
as  if  the  schools  of  Jewish  scribes  owed  their  origin 
entirely  to  the  Exile.*  But  there  were  scribes  in  Israel 
before  this.  What  the  Exile  did  for  these,  was  to 
provide  them  not  only  with  the  leisure  from  national 
business  which  we  have  noted,  but  with  a  powerful 
example  of  their  craft  as  well.  Babylonia  at  this  time 
was  a  land  full  of  scribes  and  makers  of  libraries. 
They  wTote  a  language  not  very  different  from  the 
Jewish,  and  cannot  but  have  powerfully  infected  their 
Jewish  fellows  with  the  spirit  of  their  toil  and  of 
their  methods.  To  the  Exile  we  certainly  owe  a  large 
part  of  the  historical  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  the 
arrangement  of  some  of  the  prophetic  writings,  as  well 
as — though  the  amount  of  this  is  very  uncertain — part 
of  the  codification  of  the  Law. 

2.  If  the  Exile  was  opportunity  to  the  scribes,  it  can 
only  have  been  despair  to  the  priests.  In  this  foreign 
land  the  nation  was  unclean  ;  none  of  the  old  sacrifice 
or  ritual  was  valid,  and  the  people  were  reduced  to  the 
sim.plest  elements  of  religion — prayer,  fasting  and  the 
reading  of  religious  books.     We  shall  find  our  prophecy 


*  Mr.  St.  Chad  Boscawen's  recent  lectures,  of  which  I  have  been 
able  to  see  only  the  reports  in  the  Manchester  Guardian. 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE. 


noting  the  clamour  of  the  exiles  to  God  for  ordinances 
of  righteousness — that  is,  for  the  institution  of  legal  and 
valid  rites.*  But  the  great  lesson,  which  prophecy 
brings  to  the  people  of  the  Exile,  is  that  pardon  and  \* 
restoration  to  God's  favour  are  won  only  by  waiting 
upon  Him  with  all  the  heart.  It  was  possible,  of  course, 
to  observe  some  fo^-ms ;  to  gather  at  intervals  to  in- 
quire of  the  Lord,  to  keep  the  Sabbath,  and  to  keep 
fasts.  The  first  of  these  practices,  out  of  which  the 
synagogue  probably  took  its  rise,  is  noted  by  our 
prophet,!  and  he  enforces  Sabbath-keeping  with  words, 
that  add  the  blessing  of  prophecy  to  the  law's  ancient 
sanction  of  that  institution.  Four  annual  fasts  were 
instituted  in  memory  of  the  dark  days  of  Jerusalem — 
the  day  of  the  beginning  of  Nebuchadrezzar's  siege  in 
the  tenth  month,  the  day  of  the  capture  in  the  fourth 
month,  the  day  of  the  destruction  in  the  fifth  month, 
and  the  day  of  Gedaliah's  murder  in  the  tenth  month. 
It  might  have  been  thought,  that  solemn  anniversaries 
of  a  disaster  so  recent  and  still  unrepaired  would  be 
kept  with  sincerity ;  but  our  prophet  illustrates  how 
soon  even  the  most  outraged  feelings  may  grow  formal, 
and  how  on  their  days  of  special  humiliation,  while 
their  captivity  was  still  real,  the  exiles  could  oppress 
their  own  bondsmen  and  debtors.  But  there  is  no 
religious  practice  of  this  epoch  more  apparent  through 
our  prophecies  than  the  reading  of  Scripture.  Israel's 
hope  was  neither  in  sacrifice,  nor  in  temple,  nor  in  vision 
nor  in  lot,  but  in  God's  written  Word ;  and  when  a  new 
prophet  arose,  like  the  one  we  are  about  to  study,  he  did 
not  appeal  for  his  authorisation,  as  previous  prophets 
had  done,  to  the  fact  of  his  call  or  inspiration,  but  it  was 

*  Ch.  Iviii.  2.  t  Ch.  Iviii.  13,  14. 


62  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

enough  for  him  to  point  to  some  former  word  of  God, 
and  cry,  "  See !  at  last  the  day  has  dawned  for  the 
fulfilment  of  that."  Throughout  Second  Isaiah  this  is 
what  the  anonymous  prophet  cares  to  establish — that  the 
facts  of  to-day  fit  the  promise  of  yesterday.  We  shall 
not  understand  our  great  prophecy  unless  we  realise  a 
people  rising  from  fifty  years'  close  study  of  Scripture, 
in  strained  expectation  of  its  immediate  fulfilment. 

3.  The  third  special  feature  of  the  people  in  exile  is 
their  application  to  commerce.  At  home  the  Jews  had 
not  been  a  commercial  people.*  But  the  opportunities 
of  their  Babylonian  residence  seem  to  have  started 
them  upon  those  habits,  for  which,  through  their  longer 
exile  in  our  era,  the  name  of  Jew  has  become  a  synonym. 
If  that  be  so,  Jeremiah's  advice  to  build  and  plant  t  is 
historic,  for  it  means  no  less  than  that  the  Jews  should 
throw  themselves  into  the  life  of  the  most  trafficking 
nation  of  the  time.  Their  increasing  wealth  proves  how 
they  followed  this  advice, — as  well  as  perhaps  such 
passages  as  Isa.  Iv.  2,  in  which  the  commercial  spirit 
is  reproached  for  overwhelming  the  nobler  desires  of 
religion.  The  chief  danger,  incurred  by  the  Jews  from 
an  intimate  connection  with  the  commerce  of  Babylonia, 
lay  in  the  close  relations  of  Babylonian  commerce  with 
Babylonian  idolatry.  The  merchants  of  Mesopotamia 
had  their  own  patron  gods.  In  completing  business  con- 
tracts, a  man  had  to  swear  by  the  idols,+  and  might  have 
to  enter  their  temples.  In  Isa,  Ixv.  1 1,  Jews  are  blamed 
for  forsaking  Jehovah,  and  forgetting  My  holy  mountain; 
preparing  a  table  for  Luck,  and  filling  up  mixed  wine  to 


*  See  vol.  i.,  p.  292  ff. 

"f  Jen  xxix. 

\  Records  of  the  Past,  first  series,  ix.,  95  seq. 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  63 

Fortune.  Here  it  is  more  probable  that  mercantile 
speculation,  rather  than  any  other  form  of  gambling, 
is  intended. 


III. 

But  while  all  this  is  certain  and  needing  to  be  noted 
about  the  habits  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  what  little 
trace  it  has  left  in  the  best  literature  of  the  period  ! 
We  have  already  noticed  in  that  the  great  absence  of  local 
colour.  The  truth  is  that  what  we  have  been  trying  to 
describe  as  Jewish  life  in  Babylon  was  only  a  surface  over 
deeps  in  which  the  true  life  of  the  nation  was  at  v/ork — 
was  volcanically  at  work.  Throughout  the  Exile  the  true 
Jew  lived  inwardly.  Out  of  the  depths  do  I  cry  to  Thee,  O 
Lord.  He  was  the  inhabitant  not  so  much  of  a  foreign 
prison  as  of  his  own  broken  heart.  He  sat  by  the  rivers 
of  Babylon ;  but  he  thought  upon  Zton.  Is  it  not  a  proof 
of  what  depths  in  human  nature  were  being  stirred,  that 
so  little  comes  to  the  surface  to  tell  us  of  the  external 
conditions  of  those  days  ?  There  are  no  fossils  in  the 
strata  of  the  earth,  which  have  been  cast  forth  from  her 
inner  fires ;  and  if  we  find  few  traces  of  contemporary 
life  in  these  deposits  of  Israel's  history  now  before  us,  it 
is  because  they  date  from  an  age  in  which  the  nation 
was  shaken  and  boiling  to  its  centre. 

For  if  we  take  the  writings  of  this  period — the  Book 
of  Lamentations,  the  Psalms  of  the  Exile,  and  parts  of 
other  books — and  put  them  together,  the  result  is  the 
impression  of  one  of  the  strangest  decompositions  of 
human  nature  into  its  elements  which  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  Suffering  and  sin,  recollection,  remorse  and 
revenge,  fear  and  shame  and  hate — over  the  confusion 
of  these  the  Spirit  of  God  broods  as  over  a  second 


64  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

chaos,  and  draws  each  of  them  forth  in  turn  upon  some 
articulate  prayer.  Now  it  is  the  crimson  flush  of  shame  : 
our  soul  is  exceedingly  filled  with  contempt.  Now  it  is 
the  black  rush  of  hate ;  for  if  we  would  see  how  hate 
can  rage,  we  must  go  to  the  Psalms  of  the  Exile,  which 
call  on  the  God  of  vengeance  and  curse  the  enemy  and 
dash  the  little  ones  against  the  stones.  But  the  deepest 
surge  of  all  in  that  whirlpool  of  misery  was  the  surge  of 
sin.  To  change  the  figure,  we  see  Israel's  spirit  writh- 
ing upward  from  some  pain  it  but  partly  understands, 
crying  out,  *^  What  is  this  that  keeps  God  from  hearing 
and  saving  me  ?  "  turning  like  a  wounded  beast  from 
the  face  of  its  master  to  its  sore  again,  understanding  as 
no  brute  could  the  reason  of  its  plague,  till  confession 
after  confession  breaks  away  and  the  penalty  is 
accepted,  and  acknowledged  guilt  seems  almost  to  act 
as  an  anodyne  to  the  penalty  it  explains.  Wherefore 
doth  a  living  man  complain^  a  man  for  the  punishment  of 
his  sins  ?  If  thou,  Jehovah,  shouldest  mark  iniquity,  who 
shall  stand  ?  No  wonder,  that  with  such  a  conscience 
the  Jews  occupied  the  Exile  in  writing  the  moral  of  their 
delinquent  history,  or  that  the  rest  of  their  Uterature 
which  dates  from  that  time  should  have  remained  ever 
since  the  world's  confessional. 

But  in  this  awful  experience,  there  is  still  another 
strain,  as  painful  as  the  rest,  but  pure  and  very  eloquent 
of  hope — the  sense  of  innocent  suffering.  We  cannot  tell 
the  sources,  from  which  this  considerable  feeling  may 
have  gathered  during  the  Exile,  any  more  than  we  can 
trace  from  how  many  of  the  upper  folds  of  a  valley 
the  tiny  rivulets  start,  which  form  the  stream  that 
issues  from  its  lower  end.  One  of  these  sources  may 
have  been,  as  we  have  already  suggested,  the  experience 
of  Jeremiah  ;  another  very  probably  sprang  with  every 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  65 


individual  conscience  in  the  new  generation.  Children 
come  even  to  exiles,  and  although  they  bear  the  same 
pain  with  the  same  nerves  as  their  fathers,  they  do  so 
with  a  different  conscience.  The  writings  of  the  time 
dwell  much  on  the  sufferings  of  the  children.  The  con- 
sciousness is  apparent  in  them,  that  souls  are  born  into 
the  wrath  of  God,  as  well  as  banished  there.  Our 
fathers  have  sinned  and  are  not,  and  we  bear  their 
iniquities.  This  experience  developed  with  great  force, 
till  Israel  felt  that  she  suffered  not  under  God's  wrath, 
but  for  His  sake  ;  and  so  passed  from  the  conscience  of 
the  felon  to  that  of  the  martyr.  But  if  we  are  to  under- 
stand the  prophecy  we  are  about  to  study,  we  must 
remember  how  near  akin  these  two  consciences  must 
have  been  in  exiled  Israel,  and  how  easy  it  was  for  a 
prophet  to  speak — as  our  prophet  does,  sometimes 
with  confusing  rapidity  of  exchange — now  in  the 
voice  of  the  older  and  more  guilty  generation,  and 
now  in  the  voice  of  the  younger  and  less  deservedly 
punished. 


Our  survey  of  the  external  as  well  as  the  internal 
conditions  of  Israel  in  Exile  is  now  finished.  It  has,  I 
think,  included  every  known  feature  of  their  experience 
in  Babylonia,  which  could  possibly  illustrate  our  pro- 
phecy— dated,  as  we  have  felt  ourselves  compelled  to 
date  this,  from  the  close  of  the  Exile.  Thus,  as  we 
have  striven  to  trace,  did  Israel  suffer,  learn,  grow 
and  hope  for  fifty  years — under  Nebuchadrezzar  till 
561,  under  his  successor  Evil-merodach  till  559,  under 
Neriglassar  till  554,  and  then  under  the  usurper  Nabu- 
nahid.  The  last  named  probably  oppressed  the  Jews 
more  grievously  than  their  previous  tyrants,  but  with 

VOL.    II.  5 


66  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  aggravation  of  their  yoke  there  grew  evident,  at 
the  same  time,  the  certainty  of  their  deliverance.  In 
549,  Cyrus  overthrew  the  Medes,  and  became  lord  of 
Asia  from  the  Indus  to  the  Halys.  From  that  event  his 
conquest  of  Babylonia,  however  much  delayed,  could 
only  be  a  matter  of  time. 

It  is  at  this  juncture  that  our  prophecy  breaks  in. 
Taking  for  granted  Cyrus'  sovereignty  of  the  Medes,  it 
still  looks  forward  to  his  capture  of  Babylon.  Let  us, 
before  advancing  to  its  exposition,  once  more  cast  a 
rapid  glance  over  the  people,  to  whom  it  is  addressed, 
and  whom  in  their  half  century  of  waiting  for  it  we 
have  been  endeavouring  to  describe. 

First  and  most  manifest,  they  are  a  People  with  a 
Conscience — a  people  with  the  most  awful  and  most 
articulate  conscience  that  ever  before  or  since  exposed 
a  nation's  history  or  tormented  a  generation  with  the 
curse  of  their  own  sin  and  the  sin  of  their  fathers. 
Behind  them,  ages  of  delinquent  life,  from  the  perusal  of 
the  record  of  which,  with  its  regularly  recurring  moral, 
they  have  just  risen  :  the  Books  of  Kings  appear  to 
have  been  finished  after  the  accession  of  Evil-merodach 
in  561.  Behind  them  also  nearly  fifty  years  of  sore 
punishment  for  their  sins — punishment,  which,  as  their 
Psalms  confess,  they  at  last  understand  and  accept  as 
deserved. 

But,  secondly,  they  are  a  People  with  a  Great  Hope. 
With  their  awful  consciousness  of  guilt,  they  have  the 
assurance  that  their  punishment  has  its  limits  ;  that, 
to  quote  ch.  xl.,  ver.  2,  it  is  a  set  period  of  service :  a 
former  word  of  God  having  fixed  it  at  not  more  than 
seventy  years,  and  having  promised  the  return  of  the 
nation  thereafter  to  their  own  land. 

And,  thirdly,  they  are  a  People  with  a  Great  Oppor- 


ISRAEL  IN  EXILE.  67 


tiinity.  History  is  at  last  beginning  to  set  towards  the 
vindication  of  their  hope :  Cyrus,  the  master  of  the 
age,  is  moving  rapidly,  irresistibly,  down  upon  their 
tyrants. 

^Mt  J  fourthly y  in  face  of  all  their  hope  and  opportunity, 
they  are  a  People  Disorganised,  Distracted,  and  very 
Impotent — worms  and  not  men^  as  they  describe  them- 
selves. The  generation  of  the  tried  and  responsible 
leaders  of  the  days  of  their  independence  are  all  dead, 
for  flesh  is  like  grass;  no  public  institutions  remain  in 
their  midst  such  as  ever  in  the  most  hopeless  periods  of 
the  past  proved  a  rallying-point  of  their  scattered  forces. 
There  is  no  king,  temple,  nor  city  ;  nor  is  there  any  great 
personality  visible  to  draw  their  little  groups  together, 
marshal  them,  and  lead  them  forth  behind  him.  Their 
one  hope  is  in  the  Word  of  God,  for  which  they  wait  more 
than  they  that  watch  for  the  morning;  and  the  one  duty 
of  their  nameless  prophets  is  to  persuade  them,  that 
this  Word  has  at  last  come  to  pass,  and,  in  the  absence 
of  king,  Messiah,  priest,  and  great  prophet,  is  able 
to  lift  them  to  the  opportunity  that  God's  hand  has 
opened  before  them,  and  to  the  accomplishment  of 
their  redemption. 

Upon  Israel,  with  such  a  Conscience,  such  a  Hope, 
such  an  Opportunity,  and  such  an  unaided  Reliance  on 
God's  bare  Word,  that  Word  at  last  broke  in  a  chorus 
of  voices. 

Of  these  the  first,  as  was  most  meet,  spoke  pardon 
to  the  people's  conscience  and  the  proclamation  that 
their  set  period  of  warfare  was  accomplished ;  the 
second  announced  that  circumstances  and  the  politics  of 
the  world,  hitherto  adverse,  would  be  made  easy  to  their 
return ;  the  third  bade  them,  in  their  bereavement  of 
earthly  leaders,  and   their  own  impotence,  find    their 


68  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

eternal  confidence  in  God's  Word;  while  the  fourth  lifted 
them,  as  with  one  heart  and  voice,  to  herald  the  certain 
return  of  Jehovah,  at  the  head  of  His  people,  to  His 
own  City,  and  His  quiet,  shepherdly  rule  of  them  on 
their  own  land. 

These  herald  voices  form  the  prologue  to  our  prophecy, 
ch.  xl.  l-ii,  to  which  we  will  now  turn. 


BOOK  II. 
THE  LORD'S  DELIVERANCE. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  PROLOGUE:  THE  FOUR  HERALD  VOICES 
Isaiah  xl,  i-ii. 

IT  is  only  Voices  which  we  hear  in  this  Prologue. 
No  forms  can  be  discerned,  whether  of  men  or 
angels,  and  it  is  even  difficult  to  make  out  the  direction 
from  which  the  Voices  come.  Only  one  thing  is  cer- 
tain— that  they  break  the^night,  that  they  proclaim  the 
end  of  a  long  but  fixed  period,  during  which  God  has 
punished  and  forsaken  His  people.  At  first,  the  persons 
addressed  are  the  prophets,  that  they  may  speak  to  the 
people  (vv.  1,2)',  but  afterwards  Jerusalem  as  a  whole 
is  summoned  to  publish  the  good  tidings  (ver.  9).  This 
interchange  between  a  part  of  the  people  and  the  whole — 
this  commission  to  prophesy,  made  with  one  breath  to 
some  of  the  nation  for  the  sake  of  the  rest,,  and  with 
the  next  breath  to  the  entire  nation — is  a  habit  of  our 
prophet  to  which  we  shall  scon  get  accustomed.  How 
natural  and  characteristic  k  is,  is  proved  by  its  appearance 
in  these  very  first  verses. 

The  beginning  of  the  good  tidings  is  Israel's  pardon  ;^ 
yet  it  seems  not  to  be  the  people's  return  to  Palestine 
which  is  announced  in  consequence  of  this,  so  much 
as  their  God's  return  to  them.  Prepare  ye  the  way  of 
Jehovah  J  make  straight  a  highway  /or  our  God.  Behold 
the  Lord  Jehovah  will  come.  We  may,  however,  take 
the  way  of  Jehovah  in  the  wilderness  to  mean  what  it 


72  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

means  in  the  sixty-eighth  Psalm, — His  going  forth  before 
His  people  and  leading  of  them  back  ;  while  the  promise 
that  He  will  come  to  shepherd  His  flock  (ver.  ii)  is,  of 
course,  the  promise  that  He  will  resume  the  government 
of  Israel  upon  their  ow^n  land.  There  can  be  no  doubt, 
therefore,  that  this  chapter  was  meant  for  the  people  at 
the  close  of  their  captivity  in  Babylon.  But  do  not  let 
us  miss  the  pathetic  fact,  that  Israel  is  addressed  not  in 
her  actual  shape  of  a  captive  people  in  a  foreign  land, 
but  under  the  name  and  aspect  of  her  far-away,  desolate 
country.  In  these  verses  Israel  is,  Jerusalem,  Zion,  the 
cities  of  Judah.  Such  designations  do  not  prove,  as  a 
few  critics  have  rather  pedantically  supposed,  that  the 
writer  of  the  verses  lived  in  Judah  and  addressed  him- 
self to  what  was  under  his  eyes.  It  is  not  the  vision 
of  a  Jew  at  home  that  has  determined  the  choice  of 
these  names,  but  the  desire  and  the  dream  of  a  Jew 
abroad :  that  extraordinary  passion,  which,  however 
distant  might  be  the  land  of  his  exile,  ever  filled  the 
Jew's  eyes  with  Zion,  caused  him  to  feel  the  ruin  and 
forsakenness  of  his  Mother  more  than  his  own  servitude, 
and  swept  his  patriotic  hopes,  across  his  own  deliver- 
ance and  return,  to  the  greater  glory  of  her  restoration.* 
There  is  nothing,  therefore,  to  prevent  us  taking  for 
granted,  as  we  did  in  the  previous  chapter,  that  the 
speaker  or  speakers  of  these  verses  stood  among  the 
exiles  themselves ;  but  who  they  were— men  or  angels, 
prophets  or  scribes — is  lost  in  the  darkness  out  of  which 
their  music  breaks.j 

*  See  p.  47. 

\  From  the  sequence  of  the  voices,  it  would  seem  that  we  had  in 
ch.  xl.  not  a  mere  collection  of  anonj'mous  prophecies  arranged  by 
an  editor,  but  one  complete  prophecy  by  the  author  of  most  of 
Isa.  xl.-lxvi.,  set  in  the  dramatic  form  which  obtains  through  the  other 
chapters. 


xl.  i-ii.]  THE  FOUR  HERALD   VOICES.  73 

Nevertheless  the  prophecy  is  not  anonymous.  By 
these  impersonal  voices  a  personal  revelation  is  made. 
The  prophets  may  be  nameless,  but  the  Deity  who 
speaks  through  them  speaks  as  already  known  and 
acknowledged  :  My  people,  saith  your  God. 


This  is  a  point,  which,  though  it  takes  for  its  expres- 
sion no  more  than  these  two  little  pronouns,  we  must 
not  hurriedly  pass  over.  All  the  prophecy  we  are  about 
to  study  may  be  said  to  hang  from  these  pronouns. 
They  are  the  hinges,  on  which  the  door  of  this  new 
temple  of  revelation  swings  open  before  the  long- 
expectant  people.  And,  in  fact,  such  a  conscience  and 
sympathy  as  these  little  words  express  form  the  neces- 
sary premise  of  all  revelation.  Revelation  implies  a 
previous  knowledge  of  God,  and  cannot  work  upon  men, 
except  there  already  exist  in  them  the  sense  that  they 
and  God  somehow  belong  to  each  other.  This  sense 
need  be  neither  pure,  nor  strong,  nor  articulate.  It 
may  be  the  most  selfish  and  cowardly  of  guilty  fears, — 
Jacob's  dread  as  he  drew  near  Esau,  whom  he  had 
treacherously  supplanted, — the  vaguest  of  ignorant 
desires,  the  Athenians'  worship  of  the  Unknown  God. 
But,  whatever  it  is,  the  angel  comes  to  wrestle  with  it, 
the  apostle  is  sent  to  declare  it ;  revelation  in  some  form 
takes  it  as  its  premise  and  starting-point.  This  pre- 
vious sense  of  God  may  also  be  fuller  than  in  the  cases 
just  cited.  Take  our  Lord's  own  illustration.  Upon 
the  prodigal  in  the  strange  country  there  surged  again 
the  far-ebbed  memory  of  his  home  and  childhood,  of  his 
3^ears  of  familiarity  with  a  Father  ;  and  it  was  this  tide 
which  carried  back  his  penitent  heart  within  the  hearing 
of  his  Father's  voice,  and  the  revelation  of  the  love  that 
became  his  new  life.  Now  Israel,  also  in  a  far-off  land, 
were  borne  upon  the  recollection  of  home  and  of  life 


74  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

in  the  favour  of  their  God.  We  have  seen  with  what 
knowledge  of  Him  and  from  what  relations  with  Him 
they  were  banished.  To  the  men  of  the  Exile  God  was 
already  a  Name  and  an  Experience,  and  because  that 
Name  was  The  Righteous,  and  that  Experience  was  all 
grace  and  promise^  these  men  waited  for  His  Word 
more  than  they  that  wait  for  the  morning ;  and  when 
at  length  the  Word  broke  from  the  long  darkness  and 
silence,  they  received  it,  though  its  bearers  might  be 
unseen  and  unaccredited,  because  they  recognised  and 
acknowledged  in  it  Himself.  He  who  spoke  was  their 
God,  and  they  were  His  people.  This  conscience  and 
sympathy  was  all  the  title  or  credential  which  the 
revelation  required.  It  is,  therefore,  not  too  much  to 
say,  as  we  have  said,  that  the  two  pronouns  in  ch.  xl., 
ver.  I,  are  the  necessary  premise  of  the  whole  prophecy 
which  that  verse  introduces. 

With  this  introduction  we  may  now  take  up  the  four 
herald  voices  of  the  Prologue.  Whatever  may  have 
been  their  original  relation  to  one  another,  whether  or 
not  they  came  to  Israel  by  different  messengers,  they 
are  arranged  (as  we  saw  at  the  close  of  the  previous 
chapter)  in  manifest  order  and  progress  of  thought,  and 
they  meet  in  due  succession  the  experiences  of  Israel 
at  the  close  of  the  Exile.  For  the  first  of  them  (vv.  i 
and  2)  gives  the  subjective  assurance  of  the  coming 
redemption :  it  is  the  Voice  of  Grace.  The  second 
(vv.  3-5)  proclaims  the  objective  reality  of  that  redemp- 
tion :  it  may  be  called  the  Voice  of  Providence,  or — to 
use  the  name  by  which  our  prophecy  loves  to  entitle 
the  just  and  victorious  providence  of  God — the  Voice 
of  Righteousness.  The  third  (vv.  6-%^  uncovers  the 
pledge  and  earnest  of  the  redemption  :  in  the  weakness 


xl.  i-ii.]  THE  FOUR  HERALD   VOICES.  75 

of  men  this  shall  be  the  Word  of  God.  While  the 
fourth  (vv.  9-1 1 )  is  the  Proclamation  of  Jehovah's 
restored  kingdom,  when  He  cometh  as  a  shepherd  to 
shepherd  His  people.  To  this  progress  and  chmax 
the  music  of  the  passage  forms  a  perfect  accompani- 
ment. It  would  be  difficult  to  find  in  any  language 
lips  that  first  more  softly  woo  the  heart,  and  then  take 
to  themselves  so  brave  a  trumpet  of  challenge  and 
assurance.  The  opening  is  upon  a  few  short  pulses 
of  music,  which  steal  from  heaven  as  gently  as  the 
first  ripples  of  light  in  a  cloudless  dawn — 

Nahamu,  nahamu  ammi : 
Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye  my  people  : 
Dabberu  'al-lev  Yerushalaira. 
Speak  upon  the  heart  of  Jerusalem* 

But  then  the  trumpet-tone  breaks  forth.  Call  unto  her; 
and  on  that  high  key  the  music  stays,  sweeping  with 
the  second  voice  across  hill  and  dale  like  a  company  of 
swift  horsemen,  stooping  with  the  third  for  a  while  to 
the  elegy  upon  the  withered  grass,  but  then  recovering 
itself,  braced  by  all  the  strength  of  the  Word  of  God, 
to  peal  from  tower  to  tower  with  the  fourth,  upon  the 
cry,  Behold^  the  Lord  cometh,  till  it  sinks  almost  from 
sound  to  sight,  and  yields  us,  as  from  the  surface  of 
still  w^aters,  that  sweet  reflection  of  the  twenty-third 
Psalm  with  which  the  Prologue  concludes. 

I.  Comfort  ye,  comfort  ye  My  people,  saith  your  God. 
Speak  ye  home  to  the  heart  of  Jerusalem,  and  call 
unto  her, 

*  Every  one  who  appreciates  the  music  of  the  original  will  agree 
how  incomparably  Handel  has  interpreted  it  in  those  pulses  of  music 
with  which  his  Messiah  opens. 


76  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

i    That  accomplished  is  her  warfare,  that  absolved  is 
her  iniquity  ; 
That  she  hath  received  of  J ehovaKs  hand  double  Jor 
all  her  sins. 

This  first  voice,  with  the  music  of  which  our  hearts 
have  been  thrilled  ever  since  we  can  remember,  speaks 
twice  :  first  in  a  whisper,  then  in  a  call — the  whisper 
of  the  Lover  and  the  call  of  the  Lord.  Speak  ye  home 
to  the  heart  of  Jerusalem,  and  call  unto  her. 

Now  Jerusalem  lay  in  ruins,  a  city  through  whose 
breached  walls  all  the  winds  of  heaven  blew  mournfully 
across  her  forsaken  floors.  And  the  heart  of  Jerusalem^ 
which  was  with  her  people  in  exile,  was  like  the  city — 
broken  and  defenceless.  In  that  far-off,  unsympathetic 
land  it  lay  open  to  the  alien  ;  tyrants  forced  their  idols 
upon  it,  the  peoples  tortured  it  with  their  jests. 

For  they  that  led  us  captive  required  of  us  songSy 
And  they  that  wasted  us  required  of  us  mirth. 

But  observe  how  gently  the  Divine  Beleaguerer  ap- 
proaches, how  softly  He  bids  His  heralds  plead  by 
the  gaps,  through  which  the  oppressor  has  forced  his 
idols  and  his  insults.  Of  all  human  language  they 
might  use,  God  bids  His  messengers  take  and  plead 
with  the  words  with  which  a  man  will  plead  at  a 
maidci/s  heart,  knowing  that  he  has  nothing  but  love 
to  offer  as  right  of  entrance,  and  waiting  until  love  and 
trust  come  out  to  welcome  him.  Speak  ye^  says  the 
original  literally,  on  to,  or  up  against,  or  tip  round  the 
heart  of  Jerusalem, — a  forcible  expression,  like  the 
German  *'  An  das  Herz,"  or  the  sweet  Scottish,  "  It 
cam'  up  roond  my  heart,"  and  perhaps  best  rendered 
into  English  by  the  phrase,   Speak  home  to  the  heart. 


xLi-ii.]  THE  FOUR  HERALD   VOICES.  77 

It  is  the  ordinary  Hebrew  expression  for  wooing. 
As  from  man  to  woman  when  he  wins  her,  the  Old 
Testament  uses  it  several  times.  To  speak  home  to 
the  heart  is  to  use  language  in  which  authority  and 
argument  are  both  ignored,  and  love  works  her  own 
inspiration.  While  the  haughty  Babylonian  planted 
by  force  his  idols,  while  the  folly  and  temptations  of 
heathendom  surged  recklessly  in,  God  Himself,  the 
Creator  of  this  broken  heart,  its  Husband  and  In- 
habitant of  old,*  stood  lowly  by  its  breaches,  pleading 
in  love  the  right  to  enter.  But  when  entrance  has  been 
granted,  see  how  He  bids  His  heralds  change  their 
voice  and  disposition.  The  suppliant  lover,  being 
received,  assumes  possession  and  defence,  and  they, 
who  were  first  bid  whisper  as  beggars  by  each  un- 
guarded breach,  now  leap  upon  the  walls  to  call  from 
the  accepted  Lord  of  the  city  :  Fulfilled  is  thy  time  of 
service^  absolved  thine  iniquity^  received  hast  thou  of 
Jehovah^s  hand  double  for  all  thy  sins. 

Now  this  is  no  mere  rhetorical  figure.  This  is  the 
abiding  attitude  and  aim  of  the  Almighty  towards  men. 
God's  target  is  our  heart.  His  revelation,  whatever  of 
law  or  threat  it  send  before,  is,  in  its  own  superlative 
clearness  and  urgency,  Grace.  It  comes  to  man  by 
w^ay  of  the  heart ;  not  at  first  by  argument  addressed 
to  the  intellect,  nor  by  appeal  to  experience,  but  by  the 
sheer  strength  of  a  love  laid  on  to  the  heart.  It  is,  to  begin 
with,  a  subjective  thing.  Is  revelation,  then,  entirely  a 
subjective  assurance  ?  Do  the  pardon  and  peace  which 
it  proclaims  remain  only  feelings  of  the  heart,  without 
anything  to  correspond  to  them  in  real  fact  ?  By  no 
means ;   for  these  Jews  the  revelation  now  whispered 

*  See  ch.  liv.,  where  this  figure  is  developed  with  great  beauty. 


78  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

to  their  heart  will  actually  take  shape  in  providences 
of  the  most  concrete  kind.  A  voice  will  immediately 
call,  Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the  Lord,  and  the  way  will  be 
prepared.  Babylon  will  fall ;  Cyrus  will  let  Israel  go  ; 
their  release  will  appear — most  concrete  of  things ! — 
in  "  black  and  white "  on  a  Persian  state-parchment. 
Yet,  before  these  events  happen  and  become  part  of  His 
people's  experience,  God  desires  first  to  convince  His 
people  by  the  sheer  urgency  of  His  love.  Before  He 
displays  His  Providence,  He  will  speak  in  the  power 
and  evidence  of  His  Grace.  Afterwards,  His  prophets 
shall  appeal  to  outward  facts;  we  shall  find  them  in 
succeeding  chapters  arguing  both  with  Israel  and  the 
heathen  on  grounds  of  reason  and  the  facts  of  history. 
But,  in  the  meantime,  let  them  only  feel  that  in  His 
Grace  they  have  something  for  the  heart  of  men,  which, 
striking  home,  shall  be  its  own  evidence  and  force. 

Thus  God  adventures  His  Word  forth  by  nameless 
and  unaccredited  men  upon  no  other  authority  than  the 
Grace,  with  which  it  is  fraught  for  the  heart  of  His 
people.  The  illustration,  which  this  affords  of  the 
method  and  evidence  of  Divine  revelation,  is  obvious. 
Let  us,  with  all  the  strength  of  which  we  are  capable, 
emphasize  the  fact  that  our  prophecy — which  is 
full  of  the  materials  for  an  elaborate  theology,  which 
contains  the  most  detailed  apologetic  in  the  whole 
Bible,  and  displays  the  most  glorious  prospect  of  man's 
service  and  destiny — takes  its  source  and  origin  from 
a  simple  revelation  of  Grace  and  the  subjective  assurance 
of  this  in  the  heart  of  those  to  whom  it  is  addressed. 
This  proclamation  of  Grace  is  as  characteristic  and 
dominant  in  Second  Isaiah,  as  we  saw  the  proclamation 
of  conscience  in  ch.  i.  to  be  characteristic  of  the  First 
Isaiah. 


xl.i-ii.]  THE  FOUR  HERALD   VOICES. 


79 


Before  we  pass  on,  let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  the 
contents  of  this  Grace,  in  the  three  clauses  of  the 
prophet's  cry :  Fulfilled  is  her  warfare ,  absolved  her  guilt, 
received  hath  she  of  Jehovalis  hand  double  for  all  her 
sins.  The  very  grammar  here  is  eloquent  of  grace. 
The  emphasis  lies  on  the  three  predicates,  which  ought 
to  stand  in  translation,  as  they  do  in  the  original,  at 
the  beginning  of  each  clause.  Prominence  is  given, 
not  to  the  warfare,  nor  to  the  guilt,  nor  to  the  sins,  but 
to  this,  that  accomplished  is  the  warfare,  absolved  the 
guilt,  sufficiently  expiated  the  sins.  It  is  a  great  At  Last 
which  these  clauses  peal  forth ;  but  an  At  Last  whose 
tone  is  not  so  much  inevitableness  as  undeserved  grace. 
The  term  translated  warfare  means  period  of  military 
service,  appointed  term  of  conscription  ;  and  the  application 
is  apparent  when  we  remember  that  the  Exile  had  been 
fixed,  by  the  Word  of  God  through  Jeremiah,  to  a  definite 
number  of  years.  Absolved  is  the  passive  of  a  verb 
meaning  to  pay  off  what  is  due*  But  the  third  clause 
is  especially  gracious.  It  declares  that  Israel  has 
suffered  of  punishment  more  than  double  enough  to 
atone  for  her  sins.  This  is  not  a  way  of  regarding 
either  sin  or  atonement,  which,  theologically  speaking, 
is  accurate.  What  of  its  relation  to  our  Articles,  that 
man  cannot  give  satisfaction  for  his  sins  by  the  work 
of  his  hands  or  the  pains  of  his  flesh  ?  No  :  it  would 
scarcely  pass  some  of  our  creeds  to-day.  But  all  the 
more,  that  it  thus  bursts  forth  from  strict  terms  of 
dealing,  does  it  reveal  the  generosity  of  Him  who  utters 
it.  How  full  of  pity  God  is,  to  take  so  much  account  of 
the  sufferings  sinners  have  brought  upon  themselves  ! 
How  full  of  grace  to  reckon  those  sufferings  double  the 

*  Lev.  xxvii. 


8o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

sins  that  had  earned  them  !  It  is,  as  when  we  have  seen 
gracious  men  make  us  a  free  gift,  and  in  their  courtesy 
insist  that  we  have  worked  for  it.  It  is  grace  masked 
by  grace.  As  the  height  of  art  is  to  conceal  art,  so  the 
height  of  grace  is  to  conceal  grace,  which  it  does  in 
this  verse. 

Such  is  the  Voice  of  Grace.     But, 

2.  Hark,  One  calling! 

In  the  wilderness  prepare  the  way  of  Jehovah  f 

Make  straight  in  the  desert  an  highway  Jor  our  God  ! 

Every  valley  shall  be  exalted. 

And  every  mountain  and  hill  be  made  low  : 

And  the  crooked  grow  straight, 

And  rough  places  a  plain  : 

And  the  glory  of  Jehovah  be  revealedy 

And  see  it  shall  all  flesh  together ; 

For  the  mouth  of  Jehovah  hath  spoken. 

The  relation  of  this  Voice  to  the  previous  one  has 
already  been  indicated.  This  is  the  witness  of  Provi- 
dence following  upon  the  witness  of  Grace.  Religion 
is  a  matter  in  the  first  place  between  God  and  the 
heart ;  but  religion  does  not,  as  many  mock,  remain 
an  inward  feeling.  The  secret  relation  between  God 
and  His  people  issues  into  substantial  fact,  visible  to 
all  men.  History  vindicates  faith;  Providence  executes 
Promise ;  Righteousness  follows  Grace.  So,  as  the  first 
Voice  was  spoken  to  the  heart,  this  second  is  for  the 
hands  and  feet  and  active  will.  Prepare  ye  the  way  of 
the  Lord.  If  you,  poor  captives  as  you  are,  begin  to  act 
upon  the  grace  whispered  in  your  trembling  hearts,  the 
world  will  show  the  result.  All  things  will  come  round 
to  your  side.  A  levelled  empire,  an  altered  world 
— across  those  your  way  shall  lie  clear  to  Jerusalem. 


xl.  i-ii.  THE  FOUR  HERALD   VOICES.  8i 

You  shall  go  forth  in  the  sight  of  all  men,  and  future 
generations  looking  back  shall  praise  this  manifest 
wonder  of  your  God.  The  glory  of  Jehovah  shall  be 
revealed,  and  see  it  shall  all  flesh  together. 

On  which  word,  ihow  can  our  hearts  help  rising  from 
the  comfort  of  grace  to  the  sense  of  mastery  over  this 
world,  to  the  assurance  of  heaven  itself?  Historyj 
must  come  round  to  the  side  of  faith — as  it  has  come 
round  not  in  the  case  of  Jewish  exiles  only,  but  where- 
soever such  a  faith  as  theirs  has  been  repeated. 
History  must  come  round  to  the  side  of  faith,  if  men 
will  only  obey  the  second  as  well  as  the  first  of  these 
herald  voices.  But  we  are  too  ready  to  listen  to  the 
Word  of  the  Lord,  without  seeking  to  prepare  His 
way.  We  are  satisfied  with  the  personal  comfort  of 
our  God  ;  we  are  contented  to  be  forgiven  and — oh 
mockery  ! — left  alone.  But  the  word  of  God  will  not 
leave  us  alone,  and  not  for  comfort  only  is  it  spoken. 
On  the  back  of  the  voice,  which  sets  our  heart  right 
with  God,  comes  the  voice  to  set  the  world  right,  and 
no  man  is  godly  who  has  not  heard  both.  Are  we 
timid  and  afraid  that  facts  will  not  correspond  to  our 
faith  ?  Nay,  but  as  God  reigneth  they  shall,  if  only 
we  put  to  our  hands  and  make  them  ;  all  flesh  shall 
see  it,  if  we  will  but  prepare  the  way  of  the  Lord. 

Have  we  only  ancient  proofs  of  this  ?  On  the 
contrary,  God  has  done  like  wonders  within  the  lives 
of  those  of  us  Vv^ho  are  yet  young.  During  our  genera- 
tion, a  people  has  appealed  from  the  convictions  of  her 
heart  to  the  arbitrament  of  history,  and  appealed  not 
in  vain.  When  the  citizens  of  the  Northern  States 
of  the  American  Republic,  not  content  as  they  might 
have  been  with  their  protests  against  slavery,  rose  to 
vindicate   these    by    the    sword,   they    faced,   humanly 

VOL.    II.  6 


82  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

speaking,  a  risk  as  great  as  that  to  which  Jew  was 
ever  called  by  the  word  of  God.  Their  own  brethren 
were  against  them  ;  the  world  stood  aloof.  But  even 
so,  unaided  by  united  patriotism  and  as  much  dis- 
mayed as  encouraged  by  the  opinions  of  civilisation, 
they  rose  to  the  issue  on  the  strength  of  conscience 
and  their  hearts.  They  rose  and  they  conquered. 
Slavery  was  abolished.  What  had  been  but  the  con- 
viction of  a  few  men,  became  the  surprise,  the  admiration, 
the  consent  of  the  v/hole  world.  The  glory  of  the  Lord 
was  revealed,  and  all  flesh  saw  it  together. 

3.  But  the  shadow  of  death  falls  on  everything,  even 
on  the  way  of  the  Lord.  By  550  B.C. — that  is,  after 
thirty-eight  years  of  exile — nearly  all  the  strong  men 
orTsraei's  days  of  independence  must  have  been  taken 
away.  Death  had  been  busy  with  the  exiles  for  more 
than  a  generation.  There  was  no  longer  any  human 
representative  of  Jehovah  to  rally  the  people's  trust ; 
the  monarchy,  each  possible  Messiah  who  in  turn  held 
it,  the  priesthood,  and  the  prophethood — whose  great 
personalities  so  often  took  the  place  of  Israel's  official 
leaders — had  all  alike  disappeared.  It  was  little  wonder, 
then,  that  a  nation  accustomed  to  be  led,  not  by  ideas 
like  us  Westerns,  but  by  personages,  who  were  to  it  the 
embodiment  of  Jehovah's  will  and  guidance,  should  have 
been  cast  into  despair  by  the  call.  Prepare  ye  the  way  of 
the  Lord.  What  sort  of  a  call  was  this  for  a  people, 
whose  strong  men  were  like  things  uprooted  and 
withered  !  How  could  one  be,  with  any  heart,  a  herald 
of  the  Lord  to  such  a  people  ! 

Hark  one  saying  "  Ca//."  * 
And  1  saia  : 

*  The  technical  word  to  preach  or  proclaim. 


xl.  i-ii.]  THE  FOUR  HERALD   VOICES.  83 

"  What  can  I  call? 
All  flesh  is  grass, 

And  all  its  beauty  like  a  wild-flower  I 
Withers  grass,  fades  flower, 
When  the  breath  of  Jehovah  blows  on  it. 
Surely  grass  is  the  people." 

Back  comes  a  voice  like  the  east  wind's  for  pitiless- 
ness  to  the  flowers,  but  of  the  east  wind's  own  strength 
and  clearness,  to  proclaim  Israel's  everlasting  hope. 

Withers  grass,  fades  flozver, 

But  the  word  of  our  God  endureth  for  ever. 

Everything  human  may  perish  ;  the  day  may  be  past 
of  the  great  prophets,  of  the  priests — of  the  King  in  his 
beauty,  who  was  vicegerent  of  God.  But  the  people 
have  God's  word  ;  when  all  their  leaders  have  fallen, 
and  every  visible  authority  for  God  is  taken  away,  this 
shall  be  their  rally  and  their  confidence. 

All  this  is  too  like  the  actual  experience  of  Israel  in 
Exile  not  to  be  the  true  interpretation  of  this  third,  stern 
Voice.  Their  political  and  religious  institutions,  which 
had  so  often  proved  the  initiative  of  a  new  movement, 
or  served  as  a  bridge  to  carry  the  nation  across  disaster 
to  a  larger  future,  were  not  in  existence.  Nor  does  any 
Moses,  as  in  Egypt  of  old,  rise  to  visibleness  from 
among  his  obscure  people,  impose  his  authority  upon 
them,  marshal  them,  and  lead  them  out  behind  him  to 
freedom.  But  what  we  see  is  a  scattered  and  a  leader- 
less  people,  stirred  in  their  shadow,  as  a  ripe  cornfield 
is  stirred  by  the  breeze  before  dawn — stirred  in  their 
shadow  by  the  ancient  promises  of  God,  and  every- 
where breaking  out  at  the  touch  of  these  into  psalms 
and  prophecies  of  hope.  We  see  them  expectant  of 
redemption,   we  see  them  resolved  to  return,  we  see 


84  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

them  carried  across  the  desert  to  Zion,  and  from  first 
to  last  it  is  the  word  of  God  that  is  their  inspiration 
and  assurance. 

They,  who  formerly  had  rallied  round  the  Ark  or  the 
Temple,  or  who  had  risen  to  the  hope  of  a  glorious 
Messiah,  do  not  now  speak  of  all  these,  but  their  hope^ 
they  tell  us,  is  in  His  word;  it  is  the  instrument  of  their 
salvation,  and  their  destiny  is  to  be  its  evangelists. 

4.  To  this  high  destiny  the  fourth  Voice  now  sum- 
mons them,  by  a  vivid  figure. 

Up  on  a  high  mountain^  get  thee  up^ 

Heraldess  of  good  news,  O  Zion  ! 

Lift  up  with  strength  thy  voice, 

Heraldess  of  good  news,  Jerusalem  ! 

Lift  up,  jear  not,  say  to  the  cities  of  Judah  : — 

Behold,  your  God. 

Behold,  my  Lord  Jehovah,  with  power  He  cometh, 

And  His  arm  rides  for  Him. 

Behold,  His  reward  with  Him, 

And  His  recompense  before  Him. 

As  a  shepherd  His  flock  He  shepherds  ; 

With  His  right  arm  gathers  the  lambs, 

And  in  His  bosom  bears  them. 

Ewe-mothers  He  tenderly  leads. 

The  title  which  I  have  somewhat  awkwardly  trans- 
lated heraldess — but  in  English  there  is  really  no  better 
word  for  it — is  the  feminine  participle  of  a  verb  mean- 
ing to  thrill,  or  give  joyj  by  means  of  good  news.  It  is 
used  generally  to  tell  such  happy  news  as  the  birth  of 
a  child,  but  mostly  in  the  special  sense  of  carrying 
tidings  of  victory  or  peace  home  from  the  field  to  the 
people.  The  feminine  participle  would  seem  from 
Psalm  Ixviii.,  the  women  who  publish  victory  to  the  great 


xl.  i-ii.]  THE  FOUR  HERALD   VOICES.  85 

host,  to  have  been  the  usual  term  for  the  members  of 
those  female  choirs,  who,  like  Miriam  and  her  maidens, 
celebrated  a  triumph  in  face  of  the  army,  or  came  forth 
from  the  city  to  hail  the  returning  conqueror,  as  the 
daughters  of  Jerusalem  hailed  Saul  and  David.  As 
such  a  chorister,  Zion  is  now  summoned  to  proclaim 
Jehovah's  arrival  at  the  gates  of  the  cities  of  Judah. 

The  verses  from  B£hold^_.^imLr-JG^dyii:!it\\t  end  of  the 
Prologue  are  the  song  of  the  heraldess.  Do  not  their 
mingled  martial  and  pastoral  strains  exactly  suit  the  case 
of  the  Return  ?  For  this  is  an  expedition,  on  which 
the  nation's  champion  has  gone  forth,  not  to  lead  His 
enemies  captive  to  His  gates,  but  that  He  may  gather 
His  people  home.  Not  mailed  men,  in  the  pride  of  a 
victory  they  have  helped  to  win,  march  in  behind  Him, 
— armour  and  tumult  and  the  gartnent  rolled  in  blood, — 
but  a  herd  of  mixed  and  feeble  folk,  with  babes  and 
women,  in  need  of  carriage  and  gentle  leading,  wander 
wearily  back.  And,  therefore,  in  the  mouth  of  the 
heraldess  the  figure  changes  from  a  warrior-king  to  the 
Good  Shepherd.  With  His  right  arm  He  gathers  the 
lambs,  and  in  His  bosom  bears  them.  Ewe-mothers  He 
gently  leads.  How  true  a  picture,  and  how  much  it 
recalls  !  Fifty  years  before,  the  exiles  left  their  home 
(as  we  can  see  to  this  day  upon  Assyrian  sculptures)  in 
closely-driven  companies,  fettered,  and  with  the  urgency 
upon  them  of  grim  soldiers,  who  marched  at  intervals  in 
their  ranks  to  keep  up  the  pace,  and  who  tossed  the 
weaklings  impatiently  aside.  But  now,  see  the  slow 
and  loosely-gathered  bands  wander  back,  just  as  quickly 
as  the  weakest  feel  strength  to  travel,  and  without  any 
force  or  any  guidance  save  t^hat  of  their  Almighty, 
Unseen  Shepherd. 


86  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

We  are  now  able  to  appreciate  the  dramatic  unity  of 
this  Prologue.  How  perfectly  it  gathers  into  its  four 
Voices  the  whole  course  of  Israel's  redemption  :  the  first 
assurance  of  Grace  whispered  to  the  heart,  co-operation 
with  Providence,  confidence  in  God's  bare  Word,  the  full 
Return  and  the  Restoration  of  the  City. 

But  its  climax  is  undoubtedly  the  honour  it  lays  upon 
the  whole  people  to  be  pubhshers  of  the  good  news  of 
God.  Of  this  it  speaks  with  trumpet  tones.  All  Jeru- 
salem must  be  a  herald-people.  And  how  could  Israel 
help  owning  the  constraint  and  inspiration  to  so  high 
an  office,  after  so  heartfelt  an  experience  of  grace,  so 
evident  a  redemption,  so  glorious  a  proof  of  the  power 
of  the  Word  of  God  ?  To  have  the  heart  thus  filled  with 
grace,  to  have  the  will  enlisted  in  so  Divine  a  work,  to 
have  known  the  almightiness  of  the  Divine  Word  when 
everything  else  failed — after  such  an  experience,  who 
would  not  be  able  to  preach  the  good  news  of  God,  to 
foretell,  as  our  prophet  bids  Israel  foretell,  the  coming 
of  the  Kingdom  and  Presence  of  God — the  day  when  the 
Lord's  flock  shall  be  perfect  and  none  wanting,  when 
society,  though  still  weary  and  weak  and  mortal,  shall 
have  no  stragglers  nor  outcasts  nor  reprobates. 

O  God,  so  fill  us  with  Thy  grace  and  enlist  us  in  Thy 
work,  so  manifest  the  might  of  Thy  word  to  us,  that 
the  ideal  of  Thy  perfect  kingdom  may  shine  as  bright 
and  near  to  us  as  to  Thy  prophet  of  old,  and  that  we 
may  become  its  inspired  preachers  and  ever  labour  in 
its  hope.     Amen, 


CHAPTER  VI. 

GOD:   A    SACRAMENT. 
Isaiah  xl.  12-31. 

SUCH  are  the  Four  Voices  which  herald  the  day  of 
Israel's  redemption.  They  are  scarcely  silent, 
before  the  Sun  Himself  uprises,  and  horizon  after 
horizon  of  His  empire  is  displayed  to  the  eyes  of 
His  starved  and  waiting  people.  From  the  prologue 
of  the  prophecy,  in  ch.  xl.  i-ii,  we  advance  to  the 
presentation,  in  chs.  xl.  12-xli.,  of  its  primary  and 
governing  truth — the  sovereignty  and  omnipotence  of 
God,  the  God  of  Israel. 

We  may  well  call  this  truth  the^.sun-oC-tb^-'n'ew  day-~ 
which  Israel  is  about  to  enter,  t^or  as  it  is  the  sun 
which  makes  the  day,  and  not  the  day  which  reveals 
the  sun;  so  it  is  God,  supreme  and  almighty,  who 
interprets,  predicts  and  controls  His  people's  history, 
and  not  their  history,  which,  in  its  gradual  evolution,  is 
to  make  God's  sovereignty  and  omnipotence  manifest 
to  their  experience.  Let  us  clearly  understand  this. 
The  prophecy,  which  we  are  about  to  follow,  is  an  argu- 
ment not  so  much  from  history  to  God  as  from  God  to 
history.  Israel  already  have  their  God ;  and  it  is 
because  He  is  what  He  is,  and  what  they  ought  to 
know  Him  to  be,*  that  they  are  bidden  believe  that 

*  See  xl.  21,  Have  ye  not  known  ? 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


their  future  shall  take  a  certain  course.  The  prophet 
begins  with  God,  and  everything  follows  from  God. 
All  that  in  these  chapters  lends  light  or  force,  all  that 
interprets  the  history  of  to-day  and  fills  to-morrow  with 
hope,  fact  and  promise  alike,  the  captivity  of  Israel, 
the  appearance  of  Cyrus,  the  fall  of  Babylon,  Israel's 
redemption,  the  extension  of  their  mission  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  the  conversion  of  the  Gentiles,  the  equip- 
ment, discipline  and  triumph  of  the  Servant  Himself, 
— we  may  even  say  the  expanded  geography  of  our 
prophet,  the  countries  which  for  the  first  time  emerge 
from  the  distant  west  within  the  vision  of  a  Hebrew 
seer, — all  are  due  to  that  primary  truth  about  God  with 
which  we  are  now  presented.  It  is  God's  sovereignty 
which  brings  such  far-off  things  into  the  interest  of 
Israel ;  it  is  God's  omnipotence  which  renders  such 
impossible  things  practical.  And  as  with  the  subjects, 
so  with  the  style  of  the  following  chapters.  The 
prophet's  style  is  throughout  the  effect  of  his  perfect 
and  brilliant  monotheism.  It  is  the  thought  of  God 
which  everywhere  kindles  his  imagination.  His  most 
splendid  passages  are  those,  in  which  he  soars  to  some 
lofty  vision  of  the  Divine  glory  in  creation  or  his- 
tory ;  while  his  frequent  sarcasm  and  ridicule  owe 
their  effectiveness  to  the  sudden  scorn,  with  which, 
from  such  a  view,  scattering  epigrams  the  while,  he 
sweeps  down  upon  the  heathen's  poor  images,  or 
Israel's  grudging  thoughts  of  his  God.  The  breadth 
and  the  force  of  his  imagination,  the  sweep  of  his 
rhetoric,  the  intensity  of  his  scorn,  may  all  be  traced 
to  his  sense  of  God's  sovereignty,  and  are  the  signs 
to  us  of  how  absolutely  he  was  possessed  by  this  as 
his  main  and  governing  truth. 

This,  then,  being  the  sun  of  Israel's  coming  day,  we 


xl.  12-31.]  GOD:  A  SACRAMENT.  89 

may  call  what  we  find  inch.  xl.  Ii-xli.  the^synrise — the 
full  revelation  and  uprising  on  our  sight  of  this  original 
gospel  of  the  prophet.  It  is  addressed  to  two  classes 
of  men;  in  ch.  xl.  12-31  to  Israel,  but  in  ch.  xli.  (for 
the  greater  part,  at  least)  to  the  Gentiles.  In  dealing 
with  these  two  classes  the  prophet  makes  a  great  differ- 
ence. To  Israel  he  presents  their  God,  as  it  were,  in 
sacrament  ;  but  to  the  Gentiles  he  urges  God's  claims 
in  challenge  and  argument.  It  is  to  the  past  that  he 
summons  Israel,  and  to  what  they  ought  to  know  already 
about  their  God  ;  it  is  to  the  future,  to  history  yet 
unmade,  that  he  proposes  to  the  Gentiles  they  should 
together  appeal,  in  order  to  see  whether  his  God  or 
their  gods  are  the  true  Deity.  In  this  chapter  we  shall 
deal  with  the  first  of  these — God  in  sacrament. 


The  fact  is  familiar  to  all,  that  the  Old  Testament 
nowhere  feels  the  necessity  of  proving  the  existence  of 
God.  That  would  have  been  a  proof  unintelligible  to 
those  to  whom  its  prophets  addressed  themselves.  In 
the  time  when  the  Old  Testament  came  to  him,  man  as 
Httle  doubted  the  existence  of  God  as  he  doubted  his 
own  life.  But  as  life  sometimes  burned  low,  needing 
replenishment,  so  faith  would  grow  despondent  and 
morbid,  needing  to  be  led  away  from  objects  which  only 
starved  it,  or  produced,  as  idolatry  did,  the  veriest 
delirium  of  a  religion.  A  man  had  to  get  his  faith 
lifted  from  the  thoughts  of  his  own  mind  and  the  works 
of  his  own  hand,  to  be  borne  upon  and  nourished 
by  the  works  of  God, — to  kindle  with  the  sunrise,  to 
broaden  out  by  the  sight  of  the  firmament,  to  deepen 
as  he  faced  the  spaces  of  night, — and  win  calmness  and 
strength  to    think  life    into  order  as  he  looked  forth 


90  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

upon  the  marshalled  hosts  of  heaven,  having  all  the 
time  no  doubt  that  the  God  who  created  and  guided 
these  was  his  God.  Therefore,  when  psalmist  or  prophet 
calls  Israel  to  lift  their  eyes  to  the  hills,  or  to  behold 
how  the  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God,  or  to  listen 
to  that  unbroken  tradition,  which  day  passes  to  day  and 
night  to  night,  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Creator,  it  is 
not  proofs  to  doubting  minds  which  he  offers :  it  is 
spifituaLnourishment  to  hungry  souls.  These  are  not 
arguments — they  are  sacraments.  When  we  Christians 
go  to  the  Lord's  Supper,  we  go  not  to  have  the  Lord 
proved  to  us,  but  to  feed  upon  a  life  and  a  love  of  whose 
existence  we  are  past  all  doubt.  Our  sacrament  fills  all 
the  mouths  by  which  needy  faith  is  fed — such  as  outward 
sight,  and  imagination,  and  memory,  and  wonder,  and 
love.  Now  very  much  what  the  Lord's  Supper  is  to 
us  for  fellowship  with  God  and  feeding  upon  Him,  that 
were  the  glory  of  the  heavens,  and  the  everlasting 
hills,  and  the  depth  of  the  sea,  and  the  vision  of  the 
stars  to  the  Hebrews.  They  were  the  sacraments  of 
God.  By  them  faith  was  fed,  and  the  spirit  of  man 
entered  into  the  enjoyment  of  God,  whose  existence 
indeed  he  had  never  doubted,  but  whom  he  had  lost, 
forgotten,  or  misunderstood. 

Now  it  is  as  such  a  minister  of  sacrament  to  God's 
starved  and  disheartened  people  that  our  prophet 
appears  in  ch.  xl.  12-31. 

There  were  three  elements  in  Israel's  starvation. 
Firstly,  for  nearly  fifty  years  they  had  been  deprived  of 
the  accustomed  ordinances  of  religion.  Temple  and 
altar  had  perished  ;  the  common  praise  and  the  national 
religious  fellowship  were  impossible  ;  the  traditional 
symbols  of  the  faith  lay  far  out  of  sight ;  there  was  at 
best  only  a  precarious  ministry  of  the  Word.     But,  in 


xl.  12-31.]  GOD:  A  SACRAMENT.  91 

the  second  place,  this  famine  of  the  Word  and  of 
Sacraments  was  aggravated  by  the  fact  that  history 
had  gone  against  the  people.  To  the  baser  minds 
among  them,  always  ready  to  grant  their  allegiance  to 
success,  this  could  only  mean  that  the  gods  of  the 
heathen  had  triumphed  over  Jehovah.  It  is  little 
wonder  that  such  experience,  assisted  by  the  presenta- 
tion, at  every  turn  in  their  ways,  of  idols  and  a  splendid 
idol-worship,  the  fashion  and  delight  of  the  populations 
through  whom  they  were  mixed,  should  have  tempted 
many  Jews  to  feed  their  starved  hearts  at  the  shrines 
of  their  conquerors'  gods.  But  the  result  could  only  be 
the  further  atrophy  of  their  religious  nature.  It  has 
been  held  as  a  reason  for  the  worship  of  idols  that  they 
excite  the  affection  and  imagination  of  the  worshipper. 
They  do  no  such  thing :  they  starve  and  they  stunt 
these.  The  image  reacts  upon  the  imagination,  infects 
it  with  its  own  narrowness  and  poverty,  till  man's  noblest 
creative  faculty  becomes  the  slave  of  its  own  poor  toy. 
But,  thirdly,  if  the  loftier  spirits  in  Israel  refused  to 
believe  that  Jehovah,  exalted  in  righteousness,  could 
be  less  than  the  brutal  deities  whom  Babylon  vaunted 
over  Him,  they  were  flung  back  upon  the  sorrowful 
conviction  that  their  God  had  cast  them  off;  that  He 
had  retreated  from  the  patronage  of  so  unworthy  a 
people  into  the  veiled  depths  of  His  own  nature. 
Then  upon  that  heaven,  from  which  no  answer  came 
to  those  who  were  once  its  favourites,  they  cast  we 
can  scarcely  tell  what  reflection  of  their  own  weary 
and  spiritless  estate.  As,  standing  over  a  city  by 
night,  you  will  see  the  majestic  darkness  above  stained 
and  distorted  into  shapes  of  pain  or  wrath  by  the 
upcast  of  the  city's  broken,  murky  lights,  so  many 
of  the  nobler  exiles  saw  upon  the   blank,   unanswer- 


92  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH 

ing  heaven  a  horrible  mirage  of  their  own  trouble 
and  fear.  Their  weariness  said,  He  is  weary ;  the 
ruin  of  their  national  life  reflected  itself  as  the  frus- 
tration of  His  purposes ;  their  accusing  conscience 
saw  the  darkness  of  His  counsel  relieved  only  by 
streaks  of  wrath. 

But  none  of  these  tendencies  in  Israel  went  so  far 
as  to  deny  that  there  was  a  God,  or  even  to  doubt 
His  existence.  This,  as  we  have  said,  was  nowhere 
yet  the  temptation  of  mankind.  When  the  Jew  lapsed 
from  that  true  faith,  which  we  have  seen  his  nation 
carry  into  exile,  he  fell  into  one  of  the  two  tempers 
just  described — devotion  to  false  gods  in  the  shape  of 
idols,  or  despondency  consequent  upon  false  notions 
of  the  true  God.  It  is  against  these  tempers,  one 
after  another,  that  ch.  xl.  12-31  is  directed.  And 
so  we  understand  why,  though  the  prophet  is  here 
declaring  the  basis  and  spring  of  all  his  subsequent 
prophecy,  he  does  not  adopt  the  method  of  abstract 
argument.  He  is  not  treating  with  men,  who  have  had 
no  true  knowledge  of  God  in  the  past,  or  whose  intellect 
questions  God's  reality.  He  is  treating  with  men,  who 
have  a  national  heritage  of  truth  about  God,  but  they 
have  forgotten  it ;  who  have  hearts  full  of  religious 
affection,  but  it  has  been  betrayed ;  who  have  a  devout 
imagination,  but  it  has  been  starved  ;  who  have  hopes, 
but  they  are  faint  unto  death.  He  will  recall  to  them 
their  heritage,  rally  their  shrinking  convictions  by 
the  courage  of  his  own  faith,  feed  their  hunger  after 
righteousness  *  by  a  new  hope  set  to  noble  music,  and 
display  to  the  imagination  that  has  been  stunted  by  so 


*  That  is  in  the  sense,  in  which  our  prophet  uses  the  word,  of 
salvation.     See  Ch.  XIV.  of  this  volume. 


xl.  12-31.]  GOD:  A  SACRAMENT.  93 

long  looking  upon  the  face  of  idols  the  wide  horizons 
of  Divine  glory  in  earth  and  heaven. 

His  style  corresponds  to  his  purpose.  He  does  not 
syllogize  ;  he  exhorts,  recalls  and  convicts  by  assertion. 
The  passage  is  a  series  of  questions,  ralHes  and  pro- 
mises. Have  ye  not  known  ?  have  ye  not  heard  ?  is  his 
chief  note.  Instead  of  arranging  facts  in  history  or 
nature  as  in  themselves  a  proof  for  God,  he  mentions 
them  only  by  way  of  provoking  inward  recollections. 
His  sharp  questions  are  as  hooks  to  draw  from  his 
hearers'  hearts  their  timid  and  starved  convictions,  that 
he  may  nourish  these  upon  the  sacramental  glories  of 
nature  and  of  history. 

Such  a  purpose  and  style  trust  little  to  method,  and 
it  would  be  useless  to  search  for  any  strict  division  of 
strophes  in  the  passage.*  The  following,  however,  is 
a  manifest  division  of  subject,  according  to  the  two 
tempers  to  which  the  prophet  had  to  appeal.  Verses  12 
to  25,  and  perhaps  26,  are  addressed  to  the  idolatrous 
Jews.  But  in  26  there  is  a  transition  to  the  despair  of 
the  nobler  hearts  in  Israel,  who,  though  they  continued 
to  believe  in  the  One  True  God,  imagined  that  He  had 
abandoned  them;  and  to  such  vv.  27  to  31  are  un- 
doubtedly addressed.  The  different  treatment  accorded 
to  the  two  classes  is  striking.  The  former  of  these  the 
prophet  does  not  call  by  any  title  of  the  people  of  God  ; 
with  the  latter  he  pleads  by  a  dear  double  name  that  he 


*  Some  intention  of  division  undoubtedly  appears.  Notice  the 
double  refrain,  To  whom  will  ye  liken,  etc.,  of  vv.  18  and  25  ;  and 
then  at  equal  distance  from  either  occurrence  of  this  challenge  the 
appeal,  Dost  thou  not  knotv,  etc.,  vv.  21  and  28.  But  though  these 
signs  of  a  strict  division  appear,  the  rest  is  submerged  by  the  strong 
flood  of  feehng  which  rushes  too  deep  and  rapid  for  any  hard-and- 
fast  embankments. 


94  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

may  win  them  through  every  recollection  of  their  gracious 
past,  Jacob  and  Israel  (ver.  27).  Challenge  and  sarcasm 
are  his  style  with  the  idolaters,  his  language  clashing 
out  in  bursts  too  loud  and  rapid  sometimes  for  the 
grammar,  as  in  ver.  24;  but  with  the  despondent  his 
way  is  gentle  persuasiveness,  with  music  that  swells 
and  brightens  steadily,  passing  without  a  break  from 
the  minor  key  of  pleading  to  the  major  of  glorious 
promise. 

I.  Against  the  Idolaters.  A  couple  of  sarcastic 
sentences  upon  idols  and  their  manufacture  (vv.  19,  20) 
stand  between  two  majestic  declarations  of  God's  glory 
in  nature  and  in  history  (vv.  12-17  ^"^  21-24).  It 
is  an  appeal  from  the  worshippers'  images  to  their 
imagination.  Who  hath  measured  in  his  hollow  hand 
the  ivaterSj  and  heaven  ruled  off  with  a  span  ?  Or 
caught  in  a  tierce  the  dust  of  the  earth,  and  weighed  in 
scales  mountains,  and  hills  in  a  balance  ?  Who  hath 
directed  the  spirit  of  Jehovah,  and  as  man  of  His  counsel 
hath  helped  Him  to  know  ?  With  whom  took  He  counsel, 
that  such  an  one  informed  Him  and  taught  Him  in  the 
orthodox  path,  and  taught  Him  knowledge  and  helped 
Him  to  know  the  way  of  intelligence  ?  The  term  trans- 
lated orthodox  path  is  literally  path  of  ordinance  or 
judgement,  the  regular  path,  and  is  doubtless  to  be 
taken  along  with  its  parallel,  way  of  intelligence,  as  a 
conventional  phrase  of  education,  which  the  prophet 
employed  to  make  his  sarcasm  the  stronger.  Lo  nations  I 
as  a  drop  from  a  bucket,  and  like  dust  in  a  balance,  are 
they  reckoned,  Lo  the  Isles  /*  as  a  trifle  He  lifteth.  And 
Lebanon  is  by  no  means  enough  for  burning,  nor  its 
brute-life  enough  for  an  offering.     All  the  nations  are  as 

*  See  p.  109. 


xl.  12-31.]  GOD:  A  SACRAMENT.  95 

nothing  before  Hint,  as  spent  and  as  waste  are  they 
reckoned  for  Him. 

When  he  has  thus  soared  enough,  as  on  an  arch- 
angel's wings,  he  swoops  with  one  rapid  question  down 
from  the  height  of  his  imagination  upon  the  images. 

To  whom  then  will  ye  liken  God,  and  what  likeness  will 
ye  range  by  Him  ? 

The  image  !  A  smith  cast  it,  and  a  smelter  plates  it 
with  gold,  and  smelts  silver  chains.  He  that  is  straitened 
for  an  offering — he  chooseth  a  tree  that  does  not  rot,  seeks 
to  him  a  cunning  carver  to  set  up  an  image  that  will  not 
totter* 

The  image  shrivels  up  in  face  of  that  imagination ; 
the  idol  is  abolished  by  laughter.  There  is  here,  and 
for  almost  the  first  time  in  history,  the  same  intellectual 
intolerance  of  images,  the  same  burning  sense  of  the 
unreasonableness  of  their  worship,  which  has  marked 
all  monotheists,  and  turned  even  the  meekest  of 
their  kind  into  fierce  scorners  and  satirists — Elijah, 
Mohammed,  Luther,  and  Knox,  f  We  hear  this  laughter 
from  them  all.  Sometimes  it  may  sound  truculent  or 
even  brutal,  but  let  us  remember  what  is  behind  it. 
When  we  hear  it  condemned — as,  in  the  interests  of 
art  and  imagination,  its  puritan  outbursts  have  often 
been  condemned — as  a  barbarian  incapacity  to  sympa- 


*  If  an  idol  leant  over  or  fell  that  was  the  very  w^orst  of  omens  ; 
cf.  the  case  of  Dagon. 

t  When  John  Knox  was  a  prisoner  in  France,  "  the  officers 
brought  to  him  a  painted  board,  which  they  called  Our  Lady,  and 
commanded  him  to  kiss  it.  They  violently  thrust  it  into  his  face,  and 
put  it  betwixt  his  hands,  who,  seeing  the  extremity,  took  the  idol, 
and  advised]}'  looking  about,  he  cast  it  into  the  river,  and  said,  '  Let 
Our  Lady  now  save  herself;  she  is  light  enough ;  let  her  learn  to 
swim!'  After  that  was  no  Scotsman  urged  with  that  idolatry." — 
Knox,  History  of  the  Reformation. 


96  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

thise  with  the  aesthetic  instincts  of  man,  or  to  appreciate 
the  influence  of  a  beautiful  and  elevating  cult,  we  can 
reply  that  it  w^as  the  imagination  itself  which  often  in- 
spired both  the  laughter  at,  and  the  breaking  of,  images, 
and  that,  because  the  iconoclast  had  a  loftier  vision  of 
God  than  the  image-maker,  he  has,  on  the  whole,  more 
really  furthered  the  progress  of  art  than  the  artist  whose 
works  he  has  destroyed.  It  is  certain,  for  instance, 
that  no  one  would  exchange  the  beauties  of  the  prophecy 
now  before  us,  with  its  sublime  imaginations  of  God, 
for  all  the  beauty  of  all  the  idols  of  Babylonia  which  it 
consigned  to  destruction.  ^nd^we^'Sare^to  say  the 
same  of  two  other  epochs,  when  the  uncompromising 
zeal  of  monotheists  crushed  to  the  dust  the  fruits  of 
centuries  of  Christian  art.  The  Koran  is  not  often 
appealed  to  as  a  model  of  poetry,  but  it  contains 
passages  whose  imagination  of  God,  broad  as  the 
horizon  of  the  desert  of  its  birth,  and  swift  and  clear  as 
the  desert  dawn,  may  be  regarded  as  infinitely  more  than 
compensation — from  a  purely  artistic  point  of  view — for 
the  countless  works  of  Christian  ritual  and  imagery 
which  it  inspired  the  rude  cavalry  of  the  desert  to 
trample  beneath  the  hoofs  of  their  horses.  And 
again,  if  we  are  to  blame  the  Reformers  of  Western 
Christendom  for  the  cruelty  with  which  they  lifted  their 
hammers  against  the  carved  work  of  the  sanctuary,  do 
not  let  us  forget  how  much  of  the  spirit  of  the  best 
modern  art  is  to  be  traced  to  their  more  spiritual  and 
lofty  conceptions  of  God.  No  one  will  question  how 
much  Milton's  imagination  owed  to  his  Protestantism, 
or  how  much  Carlyle's  dramatic  genius  was  the  result 
of  his  Puritan  faith.  But  it  is  to  the  spirit  of  the 
Reformation,  as  it  liberated  the  worshipper's  soul  from 
bondage  to  artificial  and  ecclesiastical  symbols  of  the 


xl,  12-31.]  GOD:   A   SACRAMENT. 


97 


Deity,  that  we  may  also  ascribe  a  large  part  of  the  force 
of  that  movement  towards  Nature  and  the  imagination 
of  God  in  His  creation  which  inspired,  for  example, 
Wordsworth's  poetry,  and  those  visual  sacraments  of 
rainbow,  storm,  and  dawn  to  which  Browning  so  often 
lifts  our  souls  from  their  dissatisfaction  with  ritual 
or  with  argument. 

From  his  sarcasm  on  the  idols  our  prophet  returns 
to  his  task  of  drawing  forth  Israel's  memory  and 
imagination.  Have  ye  not  known  ?  Have  ye  not  heard? 
Hath  it  not  been  told  you  from  the  beginning  ?  Have 
ye  not  understood  from  the  foundations  of  the  earth  ? 
He  that  is  enthroned  above  the  circle  of  the  earth,  and  its 
dwellers  are  before  Him  as  grasshoppers  ;  who  stretcheth 
as  a  fine  veil  the  heavens,  and  spreadeth  them  like  a 
dwelling  tent — that  is,  as  easily  as  if  they  were  not  even 
a  pavilion  or  marquee,  but  only  a  humble  dwelling 
tent.  He  who  bringeth  great  men  to  nothing,  the  judges 
of  the  earth  He  maketh  as  waste.  Yea,  they  were  not 
planted;  yea,  tJiey  were  not  sown;  yea,  their  root  had  not 
struck  in  the  earth,  but  immediately  He  blew  upon  them 
and  they  withered,  and  a  whirlwind  like  stubble  carried 
them  away.  To  whom,  then,  will  ye  liken  Me,  that  I  may 
match  with  him  ?  saiih  the  Holy  One.  But  this  time  it  is 
not  necessary  to  suggest  the  idols ;  they  were  dissolved 
by  that  previous  burst  of  laughter.  Therefore,  the 
prophet  turns  to  the  other  class  in  Israel  with  whom 
he  has  to  deal. 

2.  To  CHE  Despairers  of  the  Lord.  From  history 
we  pass  back  to  nature  in  ver.  26,  which  forms  a 
transition,  the  language  growing  steadier  from  the 
impetuosity  of  the  address  to  the  idolaters  to  the 
serene  music  of  the  second  part.  Enough  rebuke  has 
the  prophet  m?de.     As  he  now  lifts  his  people's  vision 

VOL.    71.  7 


98  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

to  the  stars,  it  is  not  to  shame  their  idols,  but  to  feed 
their  hearts.  Lift  up  on  high  your  eyes  and  see  !  Who 
hath  created  these  ?  Who  leads  forth  by  number  their 
host,  and  all  of  them  calleth  by  name,  by  abundance  of 
might,  for  He  is  poiverful  in  strength,  not  one  is  amissing. 
Under  such  a  night,  that  veils  the  confusion  of  earth 
only  to  bring  forth  all  the  majesty  and  order  of  heaven, 
we  feel  a  moment's  pause.  Then  as  the  expanding 
eyes  of  the  exiles  gaze  upon  the  infinite  power  above, 
the  prophet  goes  on.  Why  then  sayest  thou,  O  Jacob, 
and  speakest,  O  Israel  ?  Hidden  is  my  way  from  Jehovah, 
and  from  my  God  my  right  hath  passed. 

Why  does  the  prophet  point  his  people  to  the  stars  ? 
Because  he  is  among  Israel  on  that  vast  Babylonian 
plain,  from  whose  crowded  and  confused  populations, 
struggHng  upon  one  monotonous  level,  there  is  no 
escape  for  the  heart  but  to  the  stars.  Think  of  that 
plain  when  Nebuchadrezzar  was  its  tyrant ;  of  the 
countless  families  of  men  torn  from  their  far  homes 
and  crushed  through  one  another  upon  its  surface ; 
of  the  ancient  liberties  that  were  trampled  in  that 
servitude,  of  the  languages  that  were  stifled  in  that 
Babel,  of  the  many  patriotisms  set  to  sigh  themselves 
out  into  the  tyrant's  mud  and  mortar.  Ah  heaven  ! 
was  there  a  God  in  thee,  that  one  man  could  thus 
crush  nations  in  his  vat,  as  men  crushed  ^hell-fish  in 
those  days,  to  dye  his  imperial  purple?  Was  there 
any  Providence  above,  that  he  could  tear  peoples  from 
the  lands  and  seas,  where  their  various  gifts  and  offices 
for  humanity  had  been  developed,  and  press  them  to 
his  selfish  and  monotonous  servitude  ?  In  that  medley 
of  nations,  all  upon  one  level  of  captivity,  Israel  was 
just  as  lost  as  the  most  insignificant  tribe ;  her  history 
severed,   her    worship    impossible,  her   very^^language 


xl.  12-31.]  GOD:  A   SACRAMENT.  99 

threatened  with  decay.  No  wonder,  that  from  the 
stifling  crowd  and  desperate  flatness  of  it  all  she  cried, 
Hidden  is  my  way  from  Jehovah^  and  from  my  God  my 
right  hath  passed. 

But  from  the  flatness  and  the  crowd  the  stars  are 
visible;  and  it  was  upon  the  stars  that  the  prophet 
bade  his  people  fe^  their  hearts.  There  were  order 
and  unfailing  guidance  ;  for  the  greatness  of  His  might 
not  one  is  missing.  And  He  is  your  God.  Just  as 
visible  as  those  countless  stars  are,  one  by  one,  in  the 
dark  heavens,  to  your  eyes  looking  up,  so  your  lives 
and  fortunes  are  to  His  eyes  looking  down  on  this 
Babel  of  peoples.  He  gathereth  the  outcasts  of  Israel. 
.  .  .  He  telleth  the  number  of  the  stars.*  And  so  the 
prophet  goes  on  earnestly  to  plead :  Hast  thou  not  known,  ? 
Hast  thou  not  heard  ?  that  an  everlasting  God  is  Jehovah, 
Creator  of  the  ends  of  the  earth.  He  fainteth  not,  neither 
is  weary.  There  is  no  searching  of  His  understanding. 
Giver  to  the  weary  of  strength  !  A  nd  upon  him  that  is 
of  no  mighty  He  lavisheth  power.  Even  youths  may  faint 
and  be  weary,  and  young  men  utterly  fall;  but  they  who 
hope  in  Jehovah  shall  renew  strength,  put  forth  pinions 
like  eagles,  run  and  not  weary,  walk  and  not  faint.  Listen, 
ears,  not  for  the  sake  of  yourselves  only,  though  the 
music  is  incomparably  sweet !  Listen  for  the  sake  of 
the  starved  hearts  below,  to  whom  you  carry  the  sacra- 
ments of  hope,  whom  you  lift  to  feed  upon  the  clear 
symbols  of  God's  omnipotence  and  unfaiHng  grace. 
I  This  chapter  began  vfith  the  assurance  to  the  heart 
of  Israel  of  their  God's  will  to  redeem  and  restore  them. 
It  closes  with  bidding  the  people  take  hope  in  God. 
Let  us  again  emphasize — for  we  cannot  do  so  too  often, 

Psalm  cxlvii. 


100  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH, 

if  we  are  to  keep  ourselves  from  certain  errors  of  to- 
day on  the  subject  of  Revelation — the  nature  of  this 
prophecy.  It  is  not  a  reading-off  of  history  ;  it  is  a 
call  from  God.  No  deed  has  yet  been  done  pointing 
towards  the  certainty  of  Israel's  redemption ;  it  is  not 
from  facts  writ  large  on  the  life  of  their  day,  that  the 
prophet  bids  the  captives  read  their  Divine  discharge. 
That  discharge  he  brings  from  God ;  he  bids  them 
find  the  promise  and  the  warrant  of  it  in  their  God's 
character,  in  their  own  convictions  of  what  that  charac- 
ter is.  In  order  to  revive  those  convictions,  he  does, 
it  is  true,  appeal  to  certain  facts,  but  these  facts  are 
not  the  facts  of  contemporary  history  which  might 
reveal  to  any  clear  eye,  that  the  current  and  the  drift 
of  politics  was  setting  towards  the  redemption  of  Israel. 
They  are  facts  of  nature  and  facts  of  general  providence, 
which,  as  we  have  said,  like  sacraments  evidence  God's 
power  to  the  pious  heart,  feed  it  with  the  assurance 
of  His  grace,  and  bid  it  hope  in  His  word,  though 
history  should  seem  to  be  working  quite  the  other  way. 
This  instance  of  the  method  of  revelation  does  not 
justify  two  opinions,  Vvhich  prevail  at  the  present  day 
regarding  prophecy.  In  the  first  place,  it  proves  to 
us,  that  those  are  wrong  who,  too  much  infected  by 
the  modern  temper  to  judge  accurately  writers  so 
unsophisticated,  describe  prophecy  as  if  it  were  merely 
a  philosophy  of  history,  by  which  the  prophets  deduced 
from  their  observation  of  the  course  of  events  their 
idea  of  God  and  their  forecast  of  His  purposes.  The 
prophets  had  indeed  to  do  with  history ;  they  argued 
from  it,  and  they  appealed  to  it.,  The  history  that 
was  past  was  full  of  God's  condescension  to  men,  and 
shone  like  Nature's  self  with  sacramental  signs  of  His 
power  and  will :  the  history  that  was  future  was  to  be 


xl.  12-31.]  GOD:  A   SACRAMENT.  loi 

His  supreme  tribunal,  and  to  afford  the  vindication  of 
the  word  they  claimed  to  have  brought  from  Him.  But 
still  all  this — their  trust  in  history  and  their  use  of  it 
— was  something  secondary  in  the  prophetic  method. 
With  them  God  Himself  was  first ;  they  came  forth 
from  His  presence,  as  they  describe  it,  with  the  know- 
ledge of  His  will  gained  through  the  communion  of  their 
spirits  with  His  Spirit.  If  they  then  appealed  to  past- 
history,  it  was  to  illustrate  their  message  ;  or  to  future,  it 
was  for  vindication  of  this.  But  God  Himself  was  the 
Source  and  Author  of  it ;  and  therefore,  before  they  had 
facts  beneath  their  eyes  to  corroborate  their  promises, 
they  appealed  to  the  people,  like  our  prophet  in  ch.  xl., 
to  wait  on  Jehovah.  The  day  might  not  yet  have 
dawned  so  as  to  let  them  read  the  signs  o^  the  times. 
But  in  the  darkness  they  hoped  injehovahj  and  borrowed 
for  their  starved  hearts  from  the  stars  above,  or  other 
sacrament,  some  assurance  of  His  unfailing  power. 

Jehovah,  then,  was  the  source  of  the  prophets'  word  : 
His  character  was  its  pledge.  The  prophets  were  not 
mere  readers  from  history,  but  speakers  from  God. 

But  the  testimony  of  our  chapter  to  all  this  enables 
us  also  to  arrest  an  opinion  about  Revelation,  which 
has  too  hurriedly  run  off  with  some  Christians,  and  to 
qualify  it.  In  the  inevitable  recoil  from  the  scholastic 
view  of  revelation  as  wholly  a  series  of  laws  and 
dogmas  and  predictions,  a  number  of  writers  on  the 
subject  have  of  late  defined  Revelation  as  a  chain  of 
historical  acts,  through  which  God  uttered  His  character 
and  will  to  men.  According  to  this  view,  Revelation  is 
God  manifesting  Himself  in  history,  and  the  Bible  is 
the  record  of  this  historical  process.  Now,  while  it 
is  true  that  the  Bible  is,  to  a  large  extent,  the  annals 
and  interpretation  of  the  great  and  small  events  of  a 


162  TH£:  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

nation's  history — of  its  separation  from  the  rest  of 
mankind,  its  miraculous  deliverances,  its  growth,  its 
defeats  and  humiliations,  its  reforms  and  its  institutions  ; 
in  all  of  which  God  manifested  His  character  and  will 
— yet  the  Bible  also  records  a  revelation,  which  pre- 
ceded these  historical  deeds ;  a  revelation  the  theatre 
of  which  was  not  the  national  experience,  but  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  individual ;  which  was  recognised  and 
welcomed  by  choice  souls  in  the  secret  of  their  own 
spiritual  hfe,  before  it  was  reaUsed  and  observed  in 
outward  fact ;  which  was  uttered  by  the  prophet's  voice 
and  accepted  by  the  people's  trust  in  the  dark  and  the 
stillness,  before  the  day  of  the  Lord  had  dawned  or 
there  was  light  to  see  His  purposes  at  work.  In  a  word, 
God's  revelation  to  men  was  very  often  made  clear  in 
their  subjective  consciousness,  before  it  became  manifest 
in  the  history  about  them. 

And,  for  ourselves,  let  us  remember  that  to  this 
day  true  religion  is  as  independent  of  facts  as  it 
was  with  the  prophet.  True  religion  is  a  conviction 
of  the  character  of  God,  and  a  resting  upon  that  alone 
for  salvation.  We  need  nothing  more  to  begin  with  ; 
and  everything  else,  in  our  experience  and  fortune, 
helps  us  only  in  so  far  as  it  makes  that  primary 
conviction  more  clear  and  certain.  Darkness  may  be 
over  us,  and  we  lonely  and  starved  beneath  it.  We 
may  be  destitute  of  experience  to  support  our  faith  ; 
we  may  be  able  to  discover  nothing  in  life  about  us 
making  in  the  direction  of  our  hopes.  Still,  let  us  wait 
on  the  Lord.  It  is  by  bare  trust  in  Him,  that  we  renew 
our  strength,  put  forth  wings  like  eagles,  run  and  not 
weary,  walk  and  not  faint. 

Put  forth  wings — run — walk  !  Is  the  order  correct  ? 
Hope  swerves  from  the  edge  of  so  descending  a  pro- 


xl.  12-31.]  GOD:  A   SACRAMENT.  103 

mise,  which  seems  only  to  repeat  the  falling  course  of 
nature — that  droop,  we  all  know,  from  short  ambitions, 
through  temporary  impulsiveness,  to  the  old  common- 
place and  routine.  Soaring^runningy- walking. — ^and  is 
notjhe  next  stage,  acynic  migh.t.ask^..Standing  still  ? 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  natural  and  a  true  climax, 
rising  from  the  easier  to  the  more  difficult,  from  the 
ideal  to  the  real,  from  dream  to  duty,  from  what  can 
only  be  the  rare  occasions  of  life  to  what  must  be  life's  , 
usual  and  abiding  experience.  History  followed  this 
course.  Did  the  prophet,  as  he  promised,  think  of  what 
should  really  prove  to  be  the  fortune  of  his  people 
during  the  next  few  years  ? — the  great  flight  of  hope, 
on  which  we  see  them  rising  in  their  psalms  of  redemp- 
tion as  on  the  wings  of  an  eagle  ;  the  zeal  and  liberality 
of  preparation  for  departure  from  Babylon  ;  the  first 
rush  at  the  Return  ;  and  then  the  long  tramp,  day  after 
day,  with  the  slow  caravan,  at  the  pace  of  its  most 
heavily-laden  beasts  of  burden,  when  they  shall  walk 
and  not  faint  shcfuld  indeed  seem  to  them  the  sweetest 
part  of  their  God's  promise. 

Or  was  it  the  far  longer  perspective  of  Israel's 
history  that  bade  the  prophet  follow  this  descending 
scale  ?  The  spirit  of  prophecy  was  with  himself  to 
soar  higher  than  ever  before,  reaching  by  truly  eagle- 
flight  to  a  vision  of  the  immediate  consummation  of 
Israel's  glory:  the  Isles  waiting  for  Jehovah,  the 
Holy  City  radiant  in  His  rising,  and  open  with  all 
her  gates  to  the  thronging  nations;  the  true  religion 
flashing  from  Zion  across  the  world,  and  the  wealth  of 
the  world  pouring  back  upon  Zion.  And  some  have 
wondered,  and  some  scoff,  that  after  this  vision  there 
should  follow  centuries  of  imperceptible  progress — five- 
and-a-half  centuries  of  preparation  for  the  coming  of 


104  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  Promised  Servant;  and  then — Israel,  indeed  gone 
forth  over  the  world,  but  only  in  small  groups,  living 
upon    the   grudged    and    fitful   tolerance  of  the  great 
centres    of  Gentile    civilisation.     The   prophet    surely 
anticipates  all  this,  when  he  places  t1ie  walking  after  the 
soaring  and  the  running..    When  he  says  last,  and  most 
impressively,  of  his   peo|)le's  fortunes,  that    they  shall 
walk  and  not  faint ^  he  has  perhaps  just  those  long  cen- 
turies in  view,  when,  instead  of  a  nation  of  enthusiasts 
taking   humanity   by    storm,   we    see    small    bands    of 
pioneers  pushing  their  way   froni   city  to  city  by  the 
slow  methods   of  ancient  travel, A-Damascus,  Antioch, 
Tarsus,  Iconium,  Ephesus,  ThesScUonica,  Athens,  Corinth 
and  Rome, — everywhere  that  Paul  and  the  missionaries 
of  the  Cross  found  a  pulpit  and  a  congregation  ready 
for  the  Gospel  ;  toihng  from  day  to  day  at  their  own 
trades,    serving  the  ahen   for  wages,   here    and   there 
founding   a    synagogue,  now    and    then    completing   a 
version  of  their  Scriptures,  oftentimes  achieving  martyr- 
dom, but  ever  living  a  pure  and  a  testifyhig  life  in  face 
of  the  heathen,  with  the  passion  of  these  prophecies  at 
their  hearts.     It  was  certainly  for  such  centuries  and 
such  men  that  the  word  was  written,  they  shall  walk 
and  not  faint.      This  persistence  under  persecution,  this 
monotonous  drilling  of  themselves  in  school  and  syna- 
gogue, this  slow  progress  without  prize  or  praise  along 
the  common  highways  of  the  world   and  by  the  world's 
ordinary   means   of  livelihood,  was  a  greater  proof  of 
indomitableness  than  even  the  rapture  which  filled  their 
hearts  on  the  golden  eve  of  the  Return,  under  the  full 
diapason  of  prophecy. 

And  so  must  it  ever  be.  First  the  ideal,  and  then 
the  rush  at  it  with  passionate  eyes,  and  then  the  daily 
trudge  onward,  when  its  splendour  has  faded  from  the 


xl.  I2-3I.J  GOD:   A   SACRAMENT.  105 

view,  but  is  all  the  more  closely  wrapped  round  the  heart. 
For  glorious  as  it  is  to  rise  to  some  great  consummation 
on  wings  of  dream  and  song,  glorious  as  it  is,  also,  to 
bend  that  impetus  a  little  lower  and  take  some  practical 
crisis  of  life  by  storm,  an  even  greater  proof  of  our 
religion  and  of  the  help  our  God  can  give  us  is  the  life- 
long tramp  of  earth's  common  surface,  without  fresh 
wings  of  dream,  or  the  excitement  of  rivalry,  or  the 
attraction  of  reward,  but  with  the  head  cool,  and  the 
face  forward,  and  every  footfall  upon  firm  ground.  Let 
hope  rejoice  in  a  promise,  which  does  not  go  off  into 
the  air,  but  leaves  us  upon  solid  earth ;  and  let  us 
hold  to  a  religion,  which,  while  it  exults  in  being  the 
secret  of  enthusiasm  and  the  inspiration  of  heroism, 
is  daring  and  Divine  enough  to  find  its  climax  in  the 
commonplace. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

GOD:    AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY. 
Isaiah  xli, 

HAVING  revealed  Himself  to  His  own  people  in 
ch.  xl.,  Jehovah  now  turns  in  ch.  xli.  to  the 
heathen,  but,  naturally,  with  a  very  different  kind  of 
address.  Displaying  His  power  to  His  people  in  certain 
sacraments,  both  of  nature  and  history,  He  had  urged 
them  to  wait  upon  Him  alone  for  the  salvation,  of  which 
there  were  as  yet  no  signs  in  the  times.  But  with  the 
heathen  it  is  evidently  to  these  signs  of  the  times,  that 
He  can  best  appeal.  Contemporary  history,  facts  open 
to  every  man's  memor}^  and  reason,  is  the  common 
ground  on  which  Jehovah  and  the  other  gods  can  meet. 
Ch.  xli.  is,  therefore,  the  natural  complement  to  ch.  xl. 
In  ch.  xl.  we  have  the  element  in  revelation  that  precedes 
history  :  in  ch.  xli.  we  have  history  itself  explained  as 
a  part  of  revelation. 

Ch.  xli.  is  loosely  cast  in  the  same  form  of  a  Trial- 
at-Law,  which  we  found  in  ch.  i.  To  use  a  Scotticism, 
which  exactly  translates  the  Hebrew  of  ver.  I,  Jehovah 
goes  to  the  law  with  the  idols.  His  summons  to  the 
Trial  is  given  in  ver.  i  ;  the  ground  of  the  Trial  is 
advanced  in  vv.  2-7.  Then  comes  a  digression, 
vv.  8-20,  in  which  the  Lord  turns  from  controversy 
with  the  heathen  to  comfort  His  people.     In  vv.  21-29 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  107 

Jehovah's  plea  is  resumed,  and  in  the  silence  of  the  de- 
fendants— a  silence,  which,  as  we  shall  presently  see  by 
calling  in  the  witness  of  a  Greek  historian,  was  actual 
fact — the  argument  is  summed  up  and  the  verdict  given 
for  the  sole  divinity  of  Israel's  God. 

The  main  interest  of  the  Trial  lies,  of  course,  in  its 
appeal  to  contemporary  history,  and  to  the  central 
figure  Cyrus,  although  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  prophet 
as  yet  refrains  from  mentioning  the  hero  by  name.  This 
appeal  to  contemporary  history  lays  upon  us  the  duty 
of  briefly  indicating,  how  the  course  of  that  history  was 
tending  outside  Babylon, — outside  Babylon,  as  yet,  but 
fraught  with  fate  both  to  Babylon  and  to  her  captives. 


Nebuchadrezzar,  although  he  had  virtually  succeeded 
to  the  throne  of  the  Assyrian,  had  not  been  able  to 
repeat  from  Babylon  that  almost  universal  empire, 
which  his  predecessors  had  swayed  from  Nineveh. 
Egypt,  it  is  true,  was  again  as  thoroughly  driven  from 
Asia  as  in  the  time  of  Sargon  :  to  the  south  the  Baby- 
lonian supremacy  was  as  unquestioned  as  ever  the 
Assyrian  had  been.  But  to  the  north  Nebuchadrezzar 
met  with  an  almost  equal  rival,  who  had  helped  him  in 
the  overthrow  of  Nineveh,  and  had  fallen  heir  to  the 
Assyrian  supremacy  in  that  quarter.  This  was  Kastarit 
or  Kyaxares,  an  Aryan,  one  of  the  pioneers  of  that 
Aryan  invasion  from  the  East,  which,  though  still  tardy 
and  sparse,  was  to  be  the  leading  force  in  Western  Asia 
for  the  next  century.  This  Kyaxares  had  united  under 
his  control  a  number  of  Median  tribes,*  a  people  of 

*  Media  simply  means  "  the  country."  It  is  supposed,  that  of  the 
six  Median  tribes  only. one  was  Aryan,  holding  the  rest,  which  were 
Turanian,  under  its  influence. 


io8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Turanian  stock.  With  these,  when  Nineveh  fell,  he 
established  to  the  north  of  Nebuchadrezzar's  power 
the  empire  of  Media,  with  its  western  boundary  at  the 
river  Halys,  in  Asia  Minor,  and  its  capital  at  Ecbatana 
under  Mount  Elwand.  It  is  said  that  the  river  Indus 
formed  his  frontier  to  the  east.  West  of  the  Halys, 
the  Mede's  progress  was  stopped  by  the  Lydian  Empire, 
under  King  Alyattis,  whose  capital  was  Sardis,and  whose 
other  border  was  practically  the  coast  of  the  ^gean. 
In  585,  or  two  years  after  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem, 
Alyattis  and  Kyaxares  met  in  battle  on  the  Halys.  But 
the  terrors  of  an  eclipse  took  the  heart  to  fight  out  of 
both  their  armies,  and,  Nebuchadrezzar  intervening,  the 
three  monarchs  struck  a  treaty  among  themselves,  and 
strengthened  it  by  intermarriage.  Western  Asia  now 
virtually  consisted  of  the  confederate  powers.  Babylonia, 
Media  and  Lydia.* 

Let  us  realise  how  far  this  has  brought  us.  When 
we  stood  with  Isaiah  in  Jerusalem,  our  western  horizon 
lay  across  the  middle  of  Asia  Minor  in  the  longitude  of 
C}  prus.t  It  now  rests  upon  the  ^gean  ;  we  are 
almost  within  sight  of  Europe.  Straight  from  Babylon 
to  Sardis  runs  a  road,  with  a  regular  service  of  couriers. 
The  court  of  Sardis  holds  domestic  and  political  inter- 
course with  the  courts  of  Babylon  and  Ecbatana ;  but 
the  court  of  Sardis  also  lords  it  over  the  Asiatic  Greeks, 
worships  at  Greek  shrines,  will  shortly  be  visited  by 
Solon  and  strike  an  alliance  with  Sparta.     In  the  time 

*  There  were,  besides,  a  few  small  independent  powers  in  Asia 
Minor,  such  as  Cilicia,  whose  prince  also  intervened  at  the  Battle  of 
the  Eclipse  ;  and  the  Ionian  cities  in  the  west.  But  all  these,  with 
perhaps  the  exception  of  Lycia,  were  brought  into  subjection  to  Lydia 
by  Croesus,  son  of  Alyattis. 

+  Vol,  i.,  p.  92. 


xU.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  109 

of  the  Jewish  exile  there  were  without  doubt  many 
Greeks  in  Babylon  ;  men  may  have  spoken  there  with 
Daniel,  who  had  spoken  at  Sardis  with  Solon. 

This  extended  horizon  makes  clear  to  us  what  our 
prophet  has  in  his  view,  when  in  this  forty-first  chapter 
he  summons  Isles  to  the  bar  of  Jehovah  :  Be  silent  before 
me,  O  Isles,  and  let  Peoples  renew  their  strength, — a  vision 
and  appeal  which  frequently  recur  in  our  prophecy. 
Listen,  O  Isles,  and  hearken,  O  Peoples  from  afar  (xlix.  i ) ; 
Isles  shall  wait  for  His  law  (xlii.  4) ;  Let  them  give 
glory  to  Jehovah,  and  publish  His  praise  in  the  Isles  {yX\\. 
12) ;  Unto  me  Isles  shall  hope  (li.  5) ;  Surely  Isles  shall 
wait  for  me,  ships  of  Tarshish  first  *  The  name  is 
generally  taken  by  scholars — according  to  the  derivation 
in  the  note  below — to  have  originally  meant  habitable 
land,  and  so  land  as  opposed  to  water.  In  some  passages 
of  the  Old  Testament  it  is  undoubtedly  used  to  describe 
a  land  either  washed,  or  surrounded,  by  the  sea.f 

But  by  our  prophet's  use  of  the  word  it  is  not 
necessarily  maritime  provinces  that  are  meant.  He 
makes  isles  parallel  to  the  well-known  terms  nations, 
peoples,  Gentiles,  and  in  one  passage  he  opposes  it,  as 
dry  soil,  to  water.  J     Hence  many  translators  take  it  in 

*  Other  passages  are  :  xli.  5,  Isles  saiv  and  feared,  the  ends  of  the 
earth  trembled ;  xlii,  10,  The  sea  and  its  fulness.  Isles  and  their  dwellers , 
lix.  1 8,  He  will  repay,  fury  to  His  adversaries,  recompence  to  His  enemies  : 
to  the  Isles  He  will  repay  recompence  ;  Ixvi.  19,  The  nations,  Tarshish, 
Pul,  Lud,  drawers  of  the  bow.  Tubal,  Javan,  the  Isles  afar  off  that  have 
not  heard  my  fame.  The  Hebrew  is  ""N  'i,  and  is  supposed  to  be 
from  a  root  ^1^?  awah,  to  inhabit,  which  sense,  however,  never 
attaches  to  the  verb  in  Hebrew,  but  is  borrowed  from  the  cognate 
Arabic  word. 

f  Of  the  PhiHstine  coast,  Isa.  xx.  6;  of  theTyrian  coast,  Isa.  xxiii.  2, 
6;  of  Greece,  Ezek.  xxvii.  7;  of  Crete,  Jer.  xlvii.  4;  of  the  islands 
of  the  sea,  Isa.  xi.  1 1  and  Esther  x.  i. 

+  xlii.  15  :  Eng.  version,  /  will  turn  rivers  into  islands. 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


its  original  sense  of  countries  or  lauds.  This  bare 
rendering,  however,  does  not  do  justice  to  the  sense  of 
remoteness,  which  the  prophet  generally  attaches  to  the 
w^ord,  nor  to  his  occasional  association  of  it  with  visions 
of  the  sea.  Indeed,  as  one  reads  most  of  his  uses  of  it, 
one  is  quite  sure  that  the  island-meaning  of  the  word 
lingers  on  in  his  imagination ;  and  that  the  feeling 
possesses  him,  which  has  haunted  the  poetry  of  all  ages, 
to  describe  as  coasts  or  isles  any  land  or  lighting-place 
of  thought  which  is  far  and  dim  and  vague  ;  which 
floats  across  the  horizon,  or  emerges  from  the  distance, 
as  strips  and  promontories  of  land  rise  from  the  sea  to 
him  who  has  reached  some  new  point  of  view.  I  have 
therefore  decided  to  keep  the  rendering  familiar  to  the 
English  reader,  isles^  though,  perhaps,  coasts  would  be 
better.  If,  as  is  probable,  our  prophet's  thoughts  are 
always  towards  the  new  lands  of  the  west  as  he  uses 
the  word,  it  is  doubly  suitable  ;  those  countries  were 
both  maritime  and  remote ;  they  rose  both  from  the 
distance  and  from  the  sea. 

"  The  sprinkled  isles, 
Lily  on  lily,  that  o'erlace  the  sea 
And  laugh  their  pride,  where  the  light  wave  lisps, 
*  Greece.' " 

But  if  Babylonia  lay  thus  open  to  Lydia,  and  through 
Lydia  to  the  isles  and  coasts  of  Greece,  it  was  different 
with  her  northern  frontier.  What  strikes  us  here  is 
the  immense  series  of  fortifications,  which  Nebuchad- 
rezzar, in  spite  of  his  alliance  with  Astyages,  cast  up 
between  his  country  and  Media.  "Where  the  Tigris  and 
Euphrates  most  nearly  approach  one  another,  about 
seventy  miles  to  the  north  of  Babylon,  Nebuchadrezzar 
connected   their   waters   by   four   canals,  above  which 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  in 

he  built  a  strong  bulwark,  called  by  the  Greeks  the 
Median  wall.  This  may  have  been  over  sixty  miles 
long;  Xenophon  tells  us  it  was  twenty  feet  broad  by 
one  hundred  high.*  At  Sippara  this  line  of  defence 
was  completed  by  the  creation  of  a  great  bason  of 
water  to  flood  the  rivers  and  canals  on  the  approach 
of  an  enemy,  and  of  a  large  fortress  to  protect  the' 
bason.  Alas  for  the  vanity  of  human  purposes  !  It 
is  said  to  have  been  this  very  bason  which  caused 
the  easy  fall  of  Babylon.  By  turning  the  Euphrates 
into  it,  the  enemy  entered  the  capital  through  the 
emptied  river-bed. 

The  triple  alliance — Lydia,  Media,  Babylonia — stood 
firm  after  its  founders  passed  away.  In  555,  Croesus 
and  Astyages,  who  had  succeeded  their  fathers  at 
Sardis  and  Ecbatana  respectively,  and  Nabunahid, 
who  had  usurped  the  throne  at  Babylon,  were  still  at 
peace,  and  contented  with  the  partition  of  585.  But 
outside  them  and  to  the  east,  in  a  narrow  nook  of  land 
at  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  the  man  was  already 
crowned,  who  was  destined  to  bring  Western  Asia  again 
under  one  sceptre.  This  was  Kurush  or  Cyrus  II.  of 
Anzan,  but  known  to  history  as  Cyrus  the  Great  or 
Cyrus  the  Persian.  Cyrus  was  a  prince  of  the  Akhae- 
menian  house  of  Persia,  and  therefore,  like  the  Mede, 
an  Aryan,  but  independent  of  his  Persian  cousins,  and 
ruhng  in  his  own  right  the  little  kingdom  of  Anzan  or 
Anshan,  which,  with  its  capital  of  Susan,  lay  on  the 
rivers  Choaspes  and  Eulseus,  between  the  head  of  the 
Persian  Gulf  and  the  Zagros  Mountains,  f 

*  Anabasis  2,  4. 

f  There  were  two  branches  of  the  Persian  royal  family  after  Teispes, 
the  son  of  Akhsemenes,  the  founder.  Teispes  annexed  Anshan  on  the 
level  land  between  the  north-east  corner  of  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the 


11^  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Cyrus  the  Great  is  one  of  those  mortals  whom  the 
muse  of  history,  as  if  despairing  to  do  justice  to  him 
by  herself,  has  called  in  her  sisters  to  aid  her  in 
describing  to  posterity.  Early  legend  and  later  and 
more  elaborate  romance;  the  schoolmaster,  the  his- 
torian, the  tragedian  and  the  prophet,  all  vie  in 
presenting  to  us  this  hero  "  le  plus  sympathique  de 
I'antiquite  "  * — this  king  on  whom  we  see  so  deepi}' 
stamped  the  double  signature  of  God,  character  and 
success.  We  shall  afterwards  have  a  better  oppor- 
tunity to  speak  of  his  character.  Here  we  are  only 
concerned  to  trace  his  rapid  path  of  conquest. 

He  sprang,  then,  from  Anshan,  the  immediate  neigh- 
bour of  Babylonia  to  the  east.  This  is  the  direction 
indicated  in  the  second  verse  of  this  forty-first  chapter : 
Who  hath  raised  up  one  from  the  east  ?  But  the 
tv\enty-fifth  verse  veers  round  with  him  to  the  north: 
/  have  raised  up  one  from  the  northy  and  he  is  come. 
This  was  actually  the  curve,  from  east  to  north,  which 
his  career  almost  im. mediately  took. 

For  in  549  Astyages,  king  of  Media,  attacked  Cyrus, f 
king  of  Anshan ;  \\  hich  means  that  Cyrus  was  already 
a  considerable  and  an  aggressive  prince.  Probably  he 
had  united  by  this  time  the  two  domains  of  his  house, 
Persia  and  Anshan,  under  his  own  sceptre,  and  secured 
as  his  lieutenant  Hystaspes,  his  cousin,  the  lineal  king 

mountains  of  Persia.  Teispes'  eldest  son,  Cyrus  I.,  became  king  of 
Anshan;  his  other,  Ariaramnes,  king  of  Persia.  These  were  succeeded 
by  their  sons,  Kambyses  I.  and  Arsames.  Kambyses  I.  was  the  father 
of  Cyrus  II.,  the  great  Cyrus,  who  rejoined  Persia  to  Anshan,  to  the 
exclusion  of  his  second  cousin,  Hystaspes.  Cyrus  the  Great  was 
succeeded  by  his  son,  Kambyses  II.,  with  whom  the  Anshan  line 
closed,  and  the  power  was  transferred  to  Darius,  son  of  Hystaspes. 
Cf.  Ragozin's  Media,  in  the  "Story  of  the  Nations  "  series. 

*  Halevy,  "Cyrus  et  le  Retour  de  i'Exil,"  Etudes  Juives,  I. 

I"  Inscription  of  Nabunahid. 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  113 


of  Persia.  The  Mede,  looking  south  and  east  from 
Ecbatana,  saw  a  solid  front  opposed  to  him,  and  re- 
solved to  crush  it  before  it  grew  more  formidable. 
But  the  Aryans  among  the  Medes,  dissatisfied  with  so 
indolent  a  leader  as  Astyages,  revolted  to  Cyrus,  and 
so  the  latter,  with  characteristic  good  fortune,  easily 
became  lord  of  Media.  A  lenient  lord  he  made.  He 
spared  Astyages,  and  ranked  the  Aryan  Medes  second 
only  to  the  Persians.  But  it  took  him  till  546  to  complete 
his  conquest.  When  he  had  done  so  he  stood  master 
of  Asia  from  the  Halys  to  perhaps  as  far  east  as  the 
Indus.  He  replaced  the  Medes  in  the  threefold 
power  of  Western  Asia,  and  thus  looked  down  on 
Babylon,  as  v.  25   says,  from  the  north  (xli.  25). 

In  545,  Cyrus  advanced  upon  Babylonia,  and  struck 
at  the  northern  line  of  fortifications  at  Sippara.  He  was 
opposed  by  an  army  under  Belshazzar,  Bel-shar-uzzur, 
the  son  of  Nabunahid,  and  probably  by  his  mother's 
side  grandson  of  Nebuchadrezzar.  Army  or  fortifica- 
tions seem  to  have  been  too  much  for  Cyrus,  and  there 
is  no  further  mention  of  his  name  in  the  Babylonian 
annals  till  the  year  538.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
Cyrus  was  aware  of  the  discontent  of  the  people  with 
their  ruler  Nabunahid,  and,  with  that  genius  which  dis- 
tinguished his  whole  career  for  availing  himself  of  the 
internal  politics  of  his  foes,  he  may  have  been  content 
to  wait  till  the  Babylonian  dissatisfaction  had  grown 
riper,  perhaps  in  the  meantime  fostering  it  by  his  own 
emissaries. 

In  any  case,  the  attention  of  Cyrus  was  now  urgently 
demanded  on  the  western  boundary  of  his  empire, 
where  Lydia  was  preparing  to  invade  him.  Croesus, 
king  of  Lydia,  fresh  from  the  subjection  of  the  Ionian 
Greeks,  and  possessing  an  army  and  a  treasure  second 

VOL.   II.  8 


114  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

to  none  in  the  world,  had  lately  asked  of  Solon,  whether 
he  was  not  the  most  fortunate  of  men  ;  and  Solon  had 
answered,  to  count  no  man  happy  till  his  death.  The 
applicability  of  this  advice  to  himself  Croesus  must 
have  felt  with  a  start,  when,  almost  immediately  after  it, 
the  news  came  that  his  brother-in-law  Astyages  had 
fallen  before  an  unknown  power,  which  was  moving 
up  rapidly  from  the  east,  and  already  touched  the 
Lydian  frontier  at  the  Halys.  Croesus  w^as  thrown 
into  alarm.  He  eagerly  desired  to  know  Heaven's  will 
about  this  Persian  and  himself,  who  now  stood  face 
to  face.  But,  in  that  heathen  world,  with  its  thousand 
shrines  to  different  gods,  who  knew  the  will  of  Heaven  ? 
In  a  fashion  only  possible  to  the  richest  man  in  the 
world,  Croesus  resolved  to  discover,  by  sending  a  test- 
question,  on  a  matter  of  fact  within  his  own  knowledge, 
to  every  oracle  of  repute  :  to  the  oracles  of  the  Greeks 
at  Miletus,  Delphi,  Abae ;  to  that  of  Trophonius  ;  to  the 
sanctuary  of  Amphiaraus  at  Thebes ;  to  Dodona ;  and 
even  to  the  far-off  temple  of  Ammon  in  Libya.  The 
oracles  of  Delphi  and  Amphiaraus  alone  sent  an  answer, 
which  in  the  least  suggested  the  truth.  "To  the 
gods  of  Delphi  and  Amphiaraus,  Croesus,  therefore, 
offered  great  sacrifices, — three  thousand  victims  of  every 
kind ;  and  on  a  great  pile  of  wood  he  burned  couches 
plated  with  gold  and  silver,  golden  goblets,  purple  robes 
and  garments,  in  the  hope  that  he  would  thereby  gain 
the  favour  of  the  god  yet  more.  .  .  .  And  as  the  sacrifice 
left  behind  an  enormous  mass  of  molten  gold,  Croesus 
caused  bricks  to  be  made,  six  palms  in  length,  three 
in  breadth  and  one  in  depth;  in  all  there  were  117 
bricks.  ...  In  addition  there  was  a  golden  lion  which 
weighed  ten  talents.  When  these  were  finished,  Croesus 
sent  them  to  Delphi;    and   he  added  two  very  large 


xH.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  115 

mixing  bowls,  one  of  gold,  weighing  eight  talents  and 
a  half  and  twelve  minae,  and  one  of  silver  (the  work 
of  Theodorus  of  Samos,  as  the  Delphians  say,  and  I 
believe  it,  for  it  is  the  work  of  no  ordinary  artificer), 
four  silver  jars,  and  two  vessels  for  holy  water,  one  of 
gold,  the  other  of  silver,  circular  casts  of  silver,  a  golden 
statue  of  a  woman  three  cubits  high,  and  the  necklace 
and  girdles  of  his  queen."  *  We  can  understand,  that 
for  all  this  Croesus  got  the  best  advice  consistent 
with  the  ignorance  and  caution  of  the  priests  whom 
he  consulted.  The  oracles  told  him  that  if  he  went 
against  Cyrus  he  would  destroy  a  great  empire ;  but 
he  forgot  to  ask,  whether  it  was  his  own  or  his  rival's. 
When  he  inquired  a  second  time,  if  his  reign  should  be 
long,  they  replied  :  *^  When  a  mule  became  king  of  the 
Medes,"  then  he  might  fly  from  his  throne ;  but  again 
he  forgot  to  consider  that  there  might  be  mules  among 
men  as  among  beasts.f  At  the  same  time,  the  oracles 
tempered  their  ambiguous  prophecies  with  some  advice 
of  undoubted  sense,  for  when  he  asked  them  who  were 
the  most  powerful  among  the  Greeks,  they  replied  the 
Spartans,  and  to  Sparta  he  sent  messengers  with 
presents  to  conclude  an  alliance.  "The  Lacedaemonians 
were  filled  with  joy ;  they  knew  the  oracle  which  had 
been  given  Croesus,  and  made  him  a  friend  and  ally, 
as  they  had  previously  received  many  kindnesses  at 
his  hands."  % 

This  glimpse  into  the  preparations  of  Croesus,  whose 
embassies  compassed  the  whole  civilised  world,  and 
whose  wealth  got  him  all  that  politics  or  religion  could, 

*  Herodotus,  Book  I.         ^ 

f  Herodotus  explains  this  by  his  legend  of  Cyrus'  birth,  according 
to  which  Cyrus  was  a  hybrid — half  Persian,  half  Mede, 
t  Herodotus.  Book  I. 


ii6  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAFi. 


enables  us  to  realise  the  political  and  religious  excite- 
ment into  which  Cyrus'  advent  threw  that  generation. 
The  oracles  in  doubt  and  ambiguous  ;  the  priests,  the 
idol-manufacturers,  and  the  crowd  of  artisans,  who 
worked  in  every  city  at  the  furniture  of  the  temple, 
in  a  state  of  unexampled  activity,  with  bustle  perhaps 
most  Hke  the  bustle  of  our  government  dockyards  on 
the  eve  of  war ;  hammering  new  idols  together,  pre- 
paring costly  oblations,  overhauling  the  whole  religious 
"  ordnance,"  that  the  gods  might  be  propitiated  and  the 
stars  secured  to  fight  in  their  courses  against  the 
Persian ;  rival  politicians  practising  conciliation,  and 
bolstering  up  one  another  with  costly  presents  to  stand 
against  this  strange  and  fatal  force,  which  indifferent^ 
threatened  them  all.  What  a  commentary  Herodotus' 
story  furnishes  upon  the  verses  of  this  chapter, 
in  which  Jehovah  contrasts  the  idols  with  Himself. 
It  may  actually  have  been  Croesus  and  the  Greeks 
v^■hom  the  prophet  had  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote 
vv.  5-7  :  The  isles  have  seen,  and  they  fear;  the  ends  of 
the  earth  tremble :  they  draiv  near  and  they  come.  They 
help  every  man  his  neighbour^  and  to  his  brother  each 
sayethf  Be  strong.  So  carver  encourageth  smelter, 
smoother  with  hammer,  smiter  on  anvil;  one  saith  of  the 
soldering,  It  is  good:  and  he  fasteneth  it  with  nails  lest  it 
totter.  The  irony  is  severe,  but  true  to  the  facts  as 
Herodotus  relates  them.  The  statesmen  hoped  to  keep 
back  C3TUS  by  sending  sobbing  messages  to  one  another. 
Be  of  good  courage ;  the  priests  "  by  making  a  particu- 
larly good  and  strong  set  of  gods."  * 

While  the  imbecility  of  the  idolatries  was  thus  mani- 
fest, and  the  great  religious  ^rentres  of  heathendom 
were    reduced    to    utter    doubt    that    veiled    itself   in 

*  Sir  Edward  Strachey. 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  117 

ambiguity  and  waited  to  see  how  things  would  issue, 
there  was  one  rehgion  in  the  world,  whose  oracles  gave 
no  uncertain  sound,  whose  God  stepped  boldly  forth 
to  claim  Cyrus  for  His  own.  In  the  dust  of  Babylonia 
lay  the  scattered  members  of  a  nation  captive  and  exiled, 
a  people  civilly  dead  and  religiously  degraded ;  yet  it 
was  the  faith  of  this  worm  of  a  people,  which  welcomed 
and  understood  Cyrus,  it  was  the  God  of  this  people 
who  claimed  to  be  his  author.  The  forty-first  chapter 
looks  dreary  and  ancient  to  the  uninstructed  eye, 
but  let  our  imagination  realise  all  these  things  :  the 
ambiguous  priests,  oracles  that  would  not  speak  out, 
rehgions  that  had  no  articulate  counsel  nor  comfort 
in  face  of  the  conqueror  who  was  crushing  up  the 
world  before  him,  but  only  sobs,  solder  and  nails ;  and 
our  heart  will  leap  as  we  hear  how  God  forces  them 
all  into  judgement  before  Him,  and  makes  His  plea  as 
loud  and  clear  as  mortal  ear  may  hear.  Clatter  of  idols, 
and  murmxur  of  muffled  oracles,  filling  all  the  world; 
and  then,  hark  how  the  voice  of  Jehovah  crashes  His 
oracle  across  it  all ! 

Keep  silence  towards  Me,  O  Isles,  and  let  the  peoples 
renew  their  strength  :  let  them  approach ;  then  let  them 
speak  :  to  the  Law  let  us  come. 

Who  hath  stirred  up  from  the  sunrise  Righteousness, 
calleth  it  to  his  foot?  He  givcth  to  his  face  peoples,  and 
kings  He  makes  him  to  trample ;  giveth  them  as  dust  to 
his  sword,  as  driven  stubble  to  his  bow.  He  pursues 
them^  and  passes  to  peace  a  road  that  he  comes  not  with 
his  feet.  Who  has  wrought  it  and  done  it  ?  Summoner 
of  generations  from  the  source,*  I  Jehovah  the  First, 
and  with  the  Last;  I  am  He. 

*  hit.  from  the  head,   "da  capo."     I  am  not  sure,  however,  that  it 
does  not  rather  mean  beforehand,  hke  our  on  ahead. 


ii8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Croesus  would  have  got  a  clear  answer  here,  but  it 
is  probable  that  he  had  never  heard  of  the  Hebrews  or 
of  their  God. 

After  this  follows  the  satiric  picture  of  the  heathen 
world,  which  has  already  been  quoted.  And  then, 
after  an  interval  during  which  Jehovah  turns  to  His 
own  people  (vv.  8-2o), — for  whatever  be  His  business 
or  His  controversy,  the  Lord  is  mindful  of  His  own, — 
He  directs  His  speech  specially  against  the  third  class 
of  the  leaders  of  heathendom.  He  has  laughed  the 
foolish  statesmen  and  imagemakers  out  of  court 
(vv.  5-7);  He  now  challenges,  in  ver.  21,  the  oracles 
and  their  priests. 

We  have   seen  what   these    were,   which  this  vast 

heathen  world — heathen  but  human,  convinced  as  we 

are  that  at  the  back  of  the  world's  life  there  is  a  secret, 

a  counsel  and  a  governor,  and  anxious  as  we  are  to 

find  them — had  to  resort  to.     Timid  waiters  upon  time, 

whom  not  even  the  lavish   wealth  of  a  Croesus  could 

tempt  from    their  ambiguity  ;    prophets  speechless  in 

face  of  history ;  oracles  of  meaning  as  dark  and  shifty 

as  their  steamy  caves  at  Delphi,  of  tune  as  variable  as 

the  whispering  oak  of  Dodona ;  wily-tongued  Greeks, 

masters   of  ambiguous  phrase,   at  Miletus,  Abae,   and 

Thebes ;    Egyptian  mystics   in    the  far   off  temple   of 

"Lybic  Hammon," — these  are  what  the  prophet  sees 

standing  at  the  bar  of  history,  where  God  is  Challenger. 

Bring  here  your  case,  saitJi  Jehovah  ;  apply  your  strong 

grounds,  saith  the  King  of  Jacob.     Let  them  bring  out 

and  declare  unto  us  what  things  are  going  to  happen; 

the  first  things  *  announce  what  they  are,   that  we  may 

set  our  heart  on   them,  and  know   the  issue  of  them;. 

*  See  p.  121. 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  119 

or  the  things  that  are  coming,  let  us  hear  them.  Announce 
the  things  that  are  to  come  hereafter,  that  we  may  know 
that  ye  are  gods.  Yea,  do  good  or  do  evil,  that  we  may 
stare  and  see  it  together.  Lo  I  ye  are  nothing,  and  your 
work  is  of  nought;  an  abomination  is  he  who  chooseth 
you. 

Which  great  challenge  just  means,  Come  and  be 
tested  by  facts.  Here  is  history  needing  an  explana- 
tion, and  running  no  one  knows  whither.  Prove  your 
divinity  by  interpreting  or  guiding  it.  Cease  your 
ambiguities,  and  give  us  something  we  can  set  our 
minds  to  work  upon.  Or  do  something,  effect  some- 
thing in  history,  be  it  good  or  be  it  evil, — only  let  it  be 
patent  to  our  senses.  For  the  test  of  godhead  is  not 
ingenuity  or  mysteriousness,  but  plain  deeds,  which 
the  senses  can  perceive,  and  plain  words,  which  the 
reason  and  conscience  can  judge.  The  insistance  upon 
the  senses  and  mental  faculties  of  man  is  remarkable  : 
Make  us  hear  them,  that  we  may  know,  stare,  see  all 
together,  set  our  mind  to  them. 

But  as  we  have  learned  from  Herodotus,  there  was 
nobody  in  the  world  to  answer  such  a  challenge. 
Therefore  Jehovah  Himself  answers  it.  He  gives  His 
explanation  of  history,  and  claims  its  events  for  His 
doing. 

/  have  stirred  up  from  the  north,  and  he  hath 
come ;  from  the  rising  of  the  sun  one  who  calleth  upon 
My  Name  :  and  he  shall  trample  satraps  like  mortar,  and 
as  the  potter  trcadeth  out  clay. 

Who  hath  announced  on-ahead*  that  we  may  knoWy 


*  This  seems  to  me  to  be  more  likely  to  be  the  meaning  of  the 
prophet,  than  the  absolute  from  the  beginning.  It  suits  its  parallel 
beforehand,  and  it  is  more  in  line  with  the  general  demand   of  the 


THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 


and  beforehand  that  we  may  soy,  "  Right !  "  Yea,  there  is 
none  that  announced,  yea,  there  is  none  that  published, yea, 
there  is  none  that  heareth  your  words.  But  a  prediction 
— or  predicter,  literally  a  thing  or  man  on-ahead  (r'ishon 
corresponding  to  the  me-r'osh  of  ver.  26) — a  prediction  to 
Zion,  "  Behold,  behold  thcm,^^  and  to  Jerusalem  a  herald  of 
good  news — /  am  giving.  The  language  here  comes 
forth  in  jerks,  and  is  very  difficult  to  render.  But  I 
look  and  there  is  no  man  even  among  these,  and  7to  counsellor, 
that  I  might  ask  them  and  they  return  word.  Lo,  all  of 
them  vanity  I  and  nothingness  their  works;  wind  and 
waste  their  molten  images. 

Let  us  look  a  little  more  closely  at  the  power  of 
Prediction,  on  which  Jehovah  maintains  His  unique 
and  sovereign  Deity  against  the  idols. 

Jehovah  challenges  the  idols  to  face  present  events, 
and  to  give  a  clear,  unambiguous  forecast  of  their  issue. 
It  is  a  debatable  question,  whether  He  does  not  also 
ask  them  to  produce  previous  predictions  of  events 
happening  at  the  time  at  w^hich  He  speaks.  This  latter 
demand  is  one  that  He  makes  in  subsequent  chapters ; 
it  is  part  of  His  prophet's  argument  in  chs.  xlv.-xlvi., 
that  Jehovah  intimated  the  advent  of  Cyrus  by  His  ser- 
vants in  Israel  long  before  the  present  time.  Whether 
He  makes  this  same  demand  for  previous  predictions  in 
ch.  xli.  depends  on  how  we  render  a  clause  of  ver.  22, 
declare  ye  the  former  things.  Some  scholars  tdk^  former 
things  in  the  sense,  in  which  it  is  used  later  on  in  this 
prophecy,  of  previous  predictions.  This  is  very  doubtful. 
I  have  explained  in  a  note,  why  I  think  them  wrong  ;  but 

chapter  for  anticipation  of  events.     It  is  literally  from  the  head,  "da 
capo,"  c/  p.  117. 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  121 

even  if  they  are  right,  and  Jehovah  be  really  asking  the 
idols  to  produce  former  predictions  of  Cyrus'  career, 
the  demand  is  so  cursory,  it  proves  so  small  an  item 
in  His  plea,  and  we  shall  afterwards  find  so  many 
clearer  statements  of  it,  that  we  do  better  to  ignore  it 
now  and  confine  ourselves  to  emphasizing  the  other 
challenge,  about  which  there  is  no  doubt, — the  challenge 
to  take  present  events  and  predict  their  issue.*  Croesus 
had  asked  the  oracles  for  a  forecast  of  the  future.  This  is 
exactly  what  Jehovah  demands  in  ver.  22,  declare  unto  us 
what  things  are  going  to  happen;  in  ver.  23,  declare  the 
things  that  are  to  come  hereafter^  that  we  may  know  that  ye 
are  gods;  in  ver.  26  (spoken  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
subsequent  fulfilment  of  the  prediction),  who  declared  it 
on-ahead  that  we  may  know,  and  beforehand  that  we  may 
now  say,  "  Right  /  "  Yea,  there  is  none  that  declared,  yea, 
there  is  none  that  published,  yea,  tJiere  is  none  that  heareth 
vour  words.     But  a  prediction  unto  Zion,  "  Behold,  behold 

*  ^'lit^*N*^  r'ishonoth  is  a  relative  term,  meaning  head  things, 
things  ahead,  first  things,  prior  things,  whether  in  rank  or  time.  Here 
of  course  the  time  meaning  is  undoubted.  But  ahead  of  what  ?  prior 
to  what  ? — this  is  the  difficulty.  Ewald,  Hitzig,  A.  B.  Davidson 
Driver,  etc.,  take  it  as  prior  to  the  standpoint  of  the  speaker;  things 
that  happened  or  were  uttered  previous  to  him, — a  sense  in  which  the 
word  is  used  in  subsequent  chapters.  But  Delitzsch,  Hahn,  Cheyne, 
etc.,  take  it  to  be  things  prior  to  other  things  that  will  happen  in  the 
later  future,  early  events,  as  opposed  to  JTli^Iin  of  the  next  clause, 
which  they  take  to  mean  subsequent  things,  things  that  are  to  come 
afterwards.  I  think  Dr.Davidson's  reasons  (see  Expositor,  second  series, 
vol.  vii.,  p.  256)  are  quite  conclusive  against  this  view  of  Delitzsch, 
that  in  this  clause  the  idols  are  being  asked  to  predict  events  in  the 
near  future.  It  is  difficult,  as  he  says,  to  see  why  the  idols  should  be 
given  a  choice  between  the  earlier  and  the  later  future :  nor  does  the 
n^iN^n  of  the  contrasted  clause  at  all  suggest  a  later  future ;  it 
simply  means  things  coming,  a  term  which  is  as  applicable  to  the 
near  as  to  the  far  future.  Nevertheless,  I  am  not  persuaded  that  Dr. 
Davidson's  own  view  of  r'ishonoth  is  the  correct  one.     The  rest  of 


122  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

them"  and  to  Jerusalem  a  herald  of  good  news — I  give. 
I  give  is  emphatically  placed  at  the  end, — "  I  Jehovah 
alone,  through  my  prophets  in  Israel,  give  such  a  pre- 
diction and  publisher  of  good  news." 

We  scarcely  require  to  remind  ourselves,  that  this 
great  challenge  and  plea  are  not  mere  rhetoric  or  idle 
boasting.  Every  word  in  them  we  have  seen  to  be 
true  to  fact.  The  heathen  religions  were,  as  they  are 
here  represented,  helpless  before  Cyrus,  and  dumb  about 
the  issue  of  the  great  movements  which  the  Persian 
had  started.  On  the  other  hand,  Jehovah  had  uttered 
to  His  people  all  the  meaning  of  the  new  stir  and 
turmoil  in  history.  We  have  heard  Him  do  so  in 
ch.  xl.  There  He  gives  a  herald  of  good  news  io  Jeru- 
salem^— tells  them  of  their  approaching  deliverance, 
explains  His  redemptive  purposes,  proclaims  a  gospel. 
In  addition,  He  has  in  this  chapter  accepted  Cyrus  for 
His  own  creation  and  as  part  of  His  purpose,  and  has 
promised  him  victory. 

the  context  (see  above)  is  occupied  with  predictions  of  the  future 
only.  And  r'ishonoth  does  not  necessarily  mean  previous  predictions, 
although  used  in  this  sense  in  the  subsequent  chapters.  It  simply 
means,  as  we  have  seen,  head  things,  things  ahead,  things  beforehand, 
or  fountain-tJ lings,  origins,  causes.  That  we  are  to  understand  it  here 
in  some  such  general  and  absolute  sense  is  suggested,  I  think,  by  the 
word  jrT'inN  which  follows  it,  their  result  or  issue,  and  is  confirmed  by 
jlE^Nl,  r'ishon  (masc.  singular)  of  ver.  27,  which  is  undoubtedly  used  in 
a  general  sense,  meaning  something  or  somebody  on  ahead,  an  antici- 
pator, predicter,  forerunner  (as  Cheyne  gives  it),  or  as  I  have  rendered 
it  above,  neuter,  a  prediction.  If  r'ishon  in  ver.  27  means  a  thing  or  a 
man  given  beforehand,  then  r'ishonoth  in  ver.  22  may  also  mean  things 
given  beforehand,  predictions  made  now,  or  at  least  things  selected 
and  announced  as  causes  now,  whose  issue,  |n"'"in{^,  may  be  recog- 
nised in  the  future.  In  a  word,  r'ishonoth  would  mean  things  not 
necessarily  previous  to  the  speech  in  which  they  were  allowed,  but 
simply  things /r^f/bz/s  to  certain  results,  or  anticipating  certain  events, 
either  as  their  prediction  or  as  their  cause. 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  123 

The  God  of  Israel,  then,  is  God,  because  He  alone 
by  His  prophets  claims  facts  as  they  stand  for  His  own 
deeds,  and  announces  what  shall  become  of  them. 

Do  not  let  us,  however,  fall  into  the  easy  but  vulgar 
error  of  supposing,  that  Jehovah  claims  to  be  God  simply 
because  He  can  predict.  It  is  indeed  prediction,  which 
He  demands  from  the  heathen ;  for  prediction  is  a 
minimum  of  godhead,  and  in  asking  it  He  condescends 
to  the  heathen's  own  ideas  of  what  a  god  should  be  able 
to  do.  When  Croesus,  the  heathen  who  of  all  that  time 
spent  most  upon  rehgion,  sought  to  decide  which  of  the 
gods  was  worthiest  to  be  consulted  about  the  future  and 
propitiated  in  face  of  Cyrus,  what  test  did  he  apply  to 
them  ?    As  we  have  seen,  he  tested  them  by  their  ability 

predict  a  matter  of  fact :  the  god  who  told  him  what 
he,  Croesus,  should  be  doing  on  a  certain  day  was  to  be 
his  god.  It  is  evident,  that,  to  Croesus,  divinity  meant 
to  be  able  to  divine.  But  the  God,  who  reveals  Himself 
to  Israel,  is  infinitely  greater  than  this.  He  is  not  merely 
a  Being  with  a  far  sight  into  the  future ;  He  is  not  only 
Omniscience.  In  the  chapter  preceding  this  one  His 
power  of  prediction  is  not  once  expressed  ;  it  is  lost  in 
the  two  glories  by  which  alone  the  prophet  seeks  to 
commend  His  Godhead  to  Israel, — ^the  glory  of  His  power 
and  the  glory  of  His  faithfulness.  Jehovah  is  Omni- 
potence, Creator  of  heaven  and  earth ;  He  leads  forth 
the  stars  by  the  greatness  of  His  might;  Supreme 
Director  of  history,  it  is  He  who  bringeth  princes  to 
nothing.  But  Jehovah  is  also  unfailing  character:  the 
word  of  the  Lord  standeth  for  ever ;  it  is  foolishness  to 
say  of  Him  that  He  has  forgotten  His  people,  or  that 
their  right  has  passed  from  Him  ;  He  disappoints  none 
who  wait  upon  Him.  Such  is  the  God,  who  steps  down 
from  ch.  xl.  into  the  controversy  with  the  heathen  in 


J24  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

ch.  xli.  If  in  the  latter  He  chiefly  makes  His  claim 
to  godhead  to  rest  upon  specimens  of  prediction,  it  is 
simply,  as  we  have  said,  that  He  may  meet  the  gods  of 
the  heathen  before  a  bar  and  upon  a  principle,  which 
their  w^orshippers  recognise  as  practical  and  decisive. 
What  were  single  predictions,  here  and  there,  upon  the 
infinite  volume  of  His  working,  who  by  His  power 
could  gather  all  things  to  serve  His  own  purpose,  and 
in  His  faithfulness  remained  true  to  that  purpose  from 
everlasting  to  everlasting  !  The  unity  of  history  under 
One  Will — this  is  a  far  more  adequate  idea  of  godhead 
than  the  mere  power  to  foretell  single  events  of  history. 
And  it  is  even  to  this  truth  that  Jehovah  seeks  to  raise 
the  unaccustomed  thoughts  of  the  heathen.  Past  the 
rude  wonder,  which  is  all  that  fulfilled  predictions  of  fact 
can  excite.  He  lifts  their  religious  sense  to  Himself  and 
His  purpose,  as  the  one  secret  and  motive  of  all  history. 
He  not  only  claims  Cyrus  and  Cyrus'  career  as  His  own 
work,  but  He  speaks  of  Himself  as  summoner  of  the 
generations  from  aforehand;  I  JeJiovah,  the  First,  and  with 
the  Last;  I  am  He.  It  is  a  consummate  expression  of 
godhead,  which  lifts  us  far  above  the  thought  of  Him 
as  a  mere  divining  power. 

Now,  it  is  well  for  us — were  it  only  for  the  great 
historic  interest  of  the  thing,  though  it  will  also  further 
our  argument — to  take  record  here  that,  although  this 
conception  of  the  unity  of  life  under  One  Purpose  and 
Will  was  still  utterly  foreign,  and  perhaps  even  unin- 
telligible, to  the  heathen  world,  which  the  prophecy  has 
in  view,  the  first  serious  attempt  in  that  world  to  reach 
such  a  conception  was  contemporary  with  the  forty-first 
chapter  of  Isaiah.  It  is  as  miners  feel,  when,  tunnelling 
from  opposite  sides  of  a  mountain,  they  begin  to  hear 
the  noise  of  each  other's  picks  through  the  dwindling 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  125 

rock.  We,  who  have  come  down  the  history  of  Israel 
towards  the  great  consummation  of  rehgion  in  Chris- 
tianity, may  here  cease  for  a  moment  our  labours,  to 
listen  to  the  faint  sound  from  the  other  side  of  the  wall, 
still  separating  Israel  from  Greece,  of  a  witness  to  God 
and  an  argument  against  idolatry  similar  to  those  with 
which  we  have  been  working.  Who  is  not  moved  by 
learning,  that,  in  the  very  years  when  Jewish  prophecy 
reached  its  most  perfect  statement  of  monotheism,  pour- 
ing its  scorn  upon  the  idols  and  their  worshippers,  and 
in  the  very  Isles  on  which  its  hopes  and  influence  were 
set,  the  first  Greek  should  be  already  singing,  who  used 
his  song  to  satirize  the  mythologies  of  his  people,  and 
to  celebrate  the  unity  of  God?  Amonj  the  lonians, 
whom  Cyrus'  invasion  of  Lydia  and  of  the  ^gean  coast 
in  544  drove  across  the  seas,  was  Xenophanes  of 
Colophon.*  After  some  wanderings  he  settled  at  Elea 
in  South  Italy,  and  became  the  founder  of  the  Eleatic 
school,  the  first  philosophic  attempt  of  the  Greek  mind 
to  grasp  the  unity  of  Being.  How  far  Xenophanes 
himself  succeeded  in  this  attempt  is  a  matter  of  contro- 
versy. The  few  fragments  of  his  poetry  which  are 
extant  do  not  reveal  him  as  a  philosophical  monotheist, 
so  much  as  a  prophet  of  ^'  One  greatest  God."  His 
language  (like  that  of  the  earlier  Hebrew  prophets  in 
praising  Jehovah)  apparently  implies  the  real  existence 
of  lesser  divinities : — 

"One  God,  'mongst  both  gods  and  men  He 
is  greatest, 
Neither  in  shape  is  He  like  unto  mortals, 
nor   thought."  f 

*  Ueberweg,  History  of  Philosophy,  English  translation,  i.,  51. 
f  Quoted  by  Clement  of  Alexandria,  Slromata,  Bk.  V.,  ch.  iv.,  and  by 
Eusebius,  Prcep.  Evang.  xiii.,  13. 


126  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Xenophanes  scorns  the  anthropomorphism  of  his 
countrymen,  and  the  lawless  deeds  which  their  poets 
had  attributed  to  the  gods  : — 

"  Mortals  think  the  gods  can  be  born,  have  their 
feelings,  voice  and  form ;  but,  could  horses  or  oxen 
draw  like  men,  they  too  would  make  their  gods  after 
their  own  image."  * 

"All  things  did  Homer  and   Hesiod  lay  on 

the  gods, 
Such  as  with  mortals  are  full  of  blame  and 

disgrace. 
To  steal  and  debauch  and  outwit  one  another."  f 

Our  prophet,  to  whose  eyes  Gentile  religiousness  was 
wholly  of  the  gross  Croesus  kind,  little  suspected  that 
he  had  an  ally,  with  such  kindred  tempers  of  faith  and 
scorn,  among  the  very  peoples  to  whom  he  yearns  to 
convey  his  truth.  But  ages  after,  when  Israel  and 
Greece  had  both  issued  into  Christianity,  the  service  of 
Xenophanes  to  the  common  truth  was  recounted  by 
two  Church  writers — by  Clement  of  Alexandria  in  his 
Stromata,  and  by  Eusebius  the  historian  in  his  Prceparatio 
EvangcHca. 

We  find,  then,  that  monotheism  had  reached  its  most 
absolute  expression  in  Israel  in  the  same  decade,  in 
which  the  first  efforts  towards  the  conception  of  the 
unity  of  Being  were  just  starting  in  Greece.  But  there 
is  something  more  to  be  stated.  In  spite  of  the  splendid 
progress,  which  it  pursued  from  such  beginnings,  Greek 
philosophy  never  reached  the  height  on  which,  with 
Second   Isaiah,  Hebrew  prophecy  already  rests ;    and 

*  Ibid. 

f  Quoted  by  Ueberweg,  as  above. 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  127 

the  reason  has  to  do  with  two  points  on  which  we  are 
now  engaged, — the  omnipotence  and  the  righteousness 
of  God. 

Professor  Pfleiderer  remarks  :  ''  Even  in  the  ideahstic 
philosophy  of  the  Greeks  .  .  .  matter  remains,  how- 
ever SLibhmated,  an  irrational  something,  with  which  the 
Divine  powder  can  never  come  to  terms.  It  was  only 
in  the  consciousness,  which  the  prophets  of  Israel  had  of 
God,  that  the  thought  of  the  Divine  omnipotence  fully 
prevailed."*  We  cannot  overvalue  such  high  and 
impartial  testimony  to  the  uniqueness  of  the  Hebrew 
doctrine  of  God,  but  it  needs  to  be  supplemented. 
To  the  prophets'  sense  of  the  Divine  omnipotence, 
w^  must  add  their  unrivalled  consciousness  of  the 
E^ivine  character.  To  them  Jehovah  is  not  only  the 
/ Holy,  the  incomparable  God,  almighty  and  sublime ; 
He  is  also  the  true,  consistent  God.  He  has  a  great 
purpose,  which  He  has  revealed  of  old  to  His  people, 
and  to  which  He  remains  for  ever  faithful.  To  express 
this  the  Hebrews  had  one  word, — the  word  we  trans- 
late righteous.  We  should  often  miss  our  prophet's 
meaning,  if  by  righteousness  we  understood  some  of  the 
qualities  to  which  the  term  is  often  applied  by  us  :  if, 
for  instance,  we  used  it  in  the  general  sense  of  morality, 
or  if  we  gave  it  the  technical  meaning,  which  it  bears 
in  Christian  theology,  of  justification  from  guilt.  ,  We 
shall  afterwards  devote  a  chapter  to  the  exposition  of 
its  meaning  in  Second  Isaiah,  but  let  us  here  look  at  its 
use  in  ch.  xli.  In  ver.  26,  it  is  applied  to  the  person 
whose  prediction  turns  out  to  be  correct :  men  are  to 
say  of  him  "  right "  or  "  righteous!^     Here  it  is  evident 


*  Pfleiderer,   Philosophy   of  Religion  :    Contents    of  the  Religious 
Consciousness,  ch.  i.  (Eng.  trans.,  vol.  iii.,  p.  291). 


128  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

that  the  Hebrew — ssaddiq — -is  used  in  its  simplest 
meaning,  like  the  Latin  rectus,  and  our  "right,"  of  what 
has  been  shown  to  be  in  accordance  with  truth  or  fact. 
In  ver.  2,  again,  though  the  syntax  is  obscure,  it  seems 
to  have  the  general  sense  o(  good  faith  with  the  ability  to 
ensure  success.  Righteousness  is  here  associated  with 
Cyrus,  because  he  has  not  been  called  for  nothing, 
but  in  good  faith  for  a  purpose  which  will  be  carried 
through.  Jehovah's  righteousness,  then,  will  be  His 
trueness,  His  good  faith.  His  consistency ;  and  indeed 
this  is  the  sense  which  it  must  evidently  bear  in 
ver.  lO.  Take  it  with  the  context :  But  thou,  Israel,  My 
servant,  Jacob  whom  I  have  chosen,  seed  of  Abraham  who 
loved  Me,  whom  I  took  hold  of  from  the  ends  of  the  earth 
and  its  corners,  I  called  thee  and  said  unto  thee,  Thou  art 
My  servant  I  have  chosen  thee,  and  will  not  cast  thee 
away.  Fear  not,  for  I  am  with  thee.  Look  not  round  in 
despair,  for  I  am  thy  God.  I  will  strengthen  thee  ;  yea,  I 
will  help  thee;  yea,  I  will  uphold  thee  with  the  right  hand  of 
My  righteousness.  Here  righteousness  evidently  means 
that  Jehovah  will  act  in  good  faith  to  the  people  He  has 
called,  that  He  will  act  consistently  with  His  anciently 
revealed  purpose  towards  them.  Hitherto  Israel  has 
had  nothing  but  the  memory  that  God  called  them,  and 
the  conscience  that  He  chose  them.  Now  Jehovah  will 
vindicate  this  conscience  in  outward  fact.  He  will 
carry  through  His  calling  of  His  people,  and  perform 
His  promise.  How  He  will  do  this,  He  proceeds  to 
relate.  Israel's  enemies  shall  become  as  nothing 
(vv.  II,  12).  Israel  himself,  though  a  poor  worm  of 
a  people,  shall  be  changed  to  the  utmost  conceivable 
opposite  of  a  worm — even  a  sharp  threshing  instrument 
having  teeth — a  people  who  shall  leave  their  mark  on  the 
world.      They  shall  overcome  all  difficulties  and  rejoice 


xh.]  GOD :  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  129 

in  Jehovah.  Their  redemption  shall  be  accomplished  in  a 
series  of  evident  facts.   The  poor  and  the  needy  are  seeking 
water,  and  there  is  none,  their  tongue  faileth  for  thirst; 
/,  Jehovah,  will  answer  them,  I  the  God  of  Israel  will  not 
forsake  them.     And  this  shall  be  done  on  such  a  scale, 
that   all    the   world   will   wonder   and    be   convinced, 
vv.   18-19:  /  will  open  on  the  bare  heights  rivers,  and 
in   the  midst  of  the  plains  fountains.     I  will  make  the 
desert  a  pool  of  water,  and  the  dry  ground  water-springs. 
I  will  plant  in  the  wilderness  cedars  and  acacias  and 
myrtles  and  oil-trees ;   I  will  plant  in  the  desert  pines, 
planes  and  sherbins  together.     Do  not  let  us  spoil  the 
meaning  of  this  passage  by  taking  these  verses  literally, 
or  even  as  illustrative  of  the  kind  of  restoration  which 
Israel  was  to  enjoy.     This  vast  figure  of  a  well-watered 
and  planted  desert  the  prophet  uses  rather  to  illustrate 
the  scale  on  which  the  Restoration  will  take  place :  its 
evident  extent  and  splendour.     That  they  may  see  and 
know  and  consider  and  understand  together,  that  Jehovah 
hath  done  this,  and  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  hath  created  it. 
The  whole  passage,  then,  tells  us  what  God  means  by 
His  righteousness.     It  is  His  fidehty  to  His  calling  of 
Israel,  and  to  His  purpose  with  His  people.     It  is  the 
quality  by  which  He  cannot  forsake  His  own,  but  carries 
through  and  completes  His  promises  to  them  ;  by  which 
He  vindicates  and  justifies,  in  facts  so  large  that  they 
are  evident  to  all  mankind,  His  ancient  word  by  His 
prophets.* 

This  lengthened  exposition  will  not  have  been  in 
vain,  if  it  has  made  clear  to  us,  that  Hebrew  monotheism 
owed  its  unique  quality  to  the  emphasis,  which  the 
prophets  laid  upon  the  two  truths  of  the  Power  and 

*  See  further  on  the  subject  the  chapter  on  the  Righteousness  of 
Israel  and  of  God,  Chapter  XIV.  of  this  volume. 

VOL.   II.  9 


130  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  Character  of  God.  There  was  One  Supreme  Being, 
infinite  in  might,  and  with  one  purpose  running  down 
the  ages,  which  He  had  plainly  revealed,  and  to  which 
He  remained  constant.  The  people,  who  knew  this,  did 
not  need  to  wait  for  the  fulfilment  of  certain  test-pre- 
dictions before  trusting  Him  as  the  One  God.  Test- 
predictions  and  their  fulfilment  might  be  needful  for 
the  heathen,  from  whose  minds  the  idea  of  One 
Supreme  Being  with  such  a  character  had  vanished ; 
the  heathen  might  need  to  be  convinced  by  instances  of 
Jehovah's  omniscience,  for  omniscience  was  the  most 
Divine  attribute  of  which  they  had  conceived.  But 
Israel's  faith  rested  upon  glories  in  the  Divine  nature 
of  which  omniscience  was  the  mere  consequence.  Israel 
knew  God  was  Almighty  and  All-true,  and  that  was 
enough. 

Note  upon  Jehovah's  Claim  to  Cyrus. 

In  ver.  25  a  phrase  is  used  of  Cyrus  which  is  very  obscure, 
and  to  which,  considering  its  vagueness  even  upon  the  most 
definite  construction,  far  too  much  importance  has  been  attached. 
The  meaning  of  the  words,  the  tenses,  the  syntax — perhaps  even 
the  original  text  itself — of  this  verse  are  uncertain.  The  English 
revisers  give,  /  have  raised  tip  07ie  from  the  7wrih,  and  he  is 
come ;  fro77i  the  rising  of  the  sun  one  that  calleth  upon  My 
Na7?ie.  This  is  probably  the  true  sjmtax.*  But  in  what  tense 
is  the  verb  to  call,  and  what  does  calling  np on  My  na77ie  mean? 
In  the  Old  Testament  the  phrase  is  used  in  two  senses, — to  i7ivoke 
or  adore,  and  \.o  p7'0claii7t  or  celeb7'ate  the  7ia7ne  of  a  person. f  As 
long  as  scholars  understood  that  Cyrus  was  a  monotheist,  there 
was  a  temptation  to  choose  the  former  of  these  meanings,  and 
to  find  in  the  verse  Jehovah's  claim  upon  the  Persian,  as  a 
worshipper  of  Himself,  the  One  True  God.     But  this  interpreta- 

*  And  that  which  runs  :  .  .  .  he  is  come,  from  the  rising  of  the  sun 
he  calleth  upon  My  name  (Bredenkamp)  is  wrong. 

■]•  The  former  of  these  in  ch.  Ixiv,  7  ;  the  latter  in  xliv.  5. 


xli.]  GOD:  AN  ARGUMENT  FROM  HISTORY.  131 


tion  received  a  shock  from  the  discovery  of  a  proclamation  of 
Cyrus  after  his  entry  into  Babylon,  in  which  he  invokes  the 
names  of  Babylonian  deities,  and  calls  himself  their  "  servant."  * 
Of  course  his  doing  so  in  the  year  538  does  not  necessarily 
discredit  a  description  of  him  as  a  monotheist  eight  years  before. 
Between  548  and  546 — the  probable  date  of  ch.  xli. — a  prophet 
might  in  all  good  faith  have  hailed  as  a  worshipper  of  Jehovah 
a  Persian  who  still  stood  in  the  rising  of  the  stm, — who  had  not 
yet  issued  from  the  east  and  its  radiant  repute  of  a  religion 
purer  than  the  Babylonian  ;  although  eight  years  afterwards,  from 
motives  of  policy,  the  same  king  acknowledged  the  gods  of  his 
new  subjects.  This  may  be  ;  but  there  is  a  more  natural  way 
out  of  the  difficulty.  Is  it  fair  to  lay  upon  the  expression,  calleth 
on  My  name,  so  precise  a  meaning  as  that  of  a  strict  monotheism? 
Some  have  turned  to  the  other  use  of  the  verb,  and,  taking  it  in 
the  future  tense,  have  translated,  who  shall  proclaim  or  celebrate 
My  name, — which  Cyrus  surely  did,  when,  in  the  name  of  Jehovah, 
he  drew  up  the  edict  for  the  return  of  the  Jews  to  Palestine.! 
But  do  we  need  to  put  even  this  amount  of  meaning  upon  the 
phrase?  In  itself  it  is  vague,  but  it  also  stands  parallel  to 
another  vague  phrase  :  I  have  raised  up  one  from  the  north,  and 
he  is  come ;  from  the  sunrising  one  who  calleth  on  My  name. 
Taken  in  apposition  to  the  phrase  he  is  come,  calleth  o?i  My  name 
may  mean  no  more  than  that,  answering  to  the  instigation  of 
Jehovah,  and  owning  His  impulse,  Cyrus  by  his  career  proclaimed 
or  celebrated  Jehovah's  name.  In  any  case,  we  have  said  enough 
to  show  that,  in  our  comparative  ignorance  of  what  Cyrus'  faith 
was,  and  in  face  of  the  elastic  use  of  the  phrase  to  call  on  the 
name  of,  it  is  quite  unwarrantable  to  maintain  that  the  prophet 
must  have  meant  a  strict  monotheist,  and  therefore  absurd  to 
draw  the  inference  that  the  prophet  was  incorrect.  A  way  has 
been  attempted  out  of  the  difficulty  by  slightly  altering  the  text, 
and  so  obtaining  the  version,  /  have  raised  up  one  froTn  the 
north,  and  he  is  co?ne ;  from  the  sunrise  I  call  him  by  name.X 
This  is  a  change  which  is  in  harmony  with  ch.  xlv.  3,  4,  but  has 
otherwise  no  evidence  in  its  favour. 

*  Translation  of  the  Cyrus-cylinder  in  "C3a-us  et  le  Retour  de  I'Exil,'* 
by  YiSiXevy,  Revue  des  Etudes  Juives,  No.  I,  1880. 
f  Ezra  i.  2 ;    2  Chron.  xxxvi,  22,  23. 
X  \m^1  KIpK  for  ^DE5^3  8<"lp\ 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  PASSION  OF  GOD. 
Isaiah  xlii.  13-17. 

AT  the  beginning  of  ch.  xlii.  we  reach  one  of  those 
distinct  stages,  the  frequent  appearance  of  which 
in  our  prophecy  assures  us,  that,  for  all  its  mingling  and 
recurrent  style,  the  prophecy  is  a  unity  with  a  distinct, 
if  somewhat  involved,  progress  of  thought.  For  while 
chs.  xl.  and  xli.  establish  the  sovereignty  and  declare  the 
character  of  the  One  True  God  before  His  people  and 
the  heathen,  ch.  xlii.  takes  what  is  naturally  the  next 
step,  of  publishing  to  both  these  classes  His  Divine 
will.  This  purpose  of  God  is  set  forth  in  the  first 
seven  verses  of  the  chapter.  It  is  identified  with  a 
human  Figure,  who  is  to  be  God's  agent  upon  earth, 
and  who  is  styled  the  Servant  of  Jehovah.  Next  to 
Jehovah  Himself,  the  Servant  of  Jehovah  is  by  far  the 
most  important  personage  within  our  prophet's  gaze. 
He  is  named,  described,  commissioned  and  encouraged 
over  and  over  again  throughout  the  prophecy;  his 
character  and  indispensable  work  are  hung  upon  with  a 
frequency  and  a  fondness  almost  equal  to  the  steadfast 
faith,  which  the  prophet  reposes  in  Jehovah  Himself. 
Were  we  following  our  prophecy  chapter  by  chapter, 
now   would    be   the   time   to   put   the   question,  Who 


xlii.  13-17.]  THE  PASSION  OF  GOD.  133 

is  this  Servant,  who  is  suddenly  introduced  to  us  ? 
and  to  look  ahead  for  the  various  and  even  conflicting 
answers,  which  rise  from  the  subsequent  chapters. 
But  we  agreed,  for  clearness'  sake,*  to  take  all  the 
passages  about  the  Servant,  which  are  easily  detached 
from  the  rest  of  the  prophecy,  and  treat  by  themselves, 
and  to  continue  in  the  meantime  our  prophet's  main 
theme  of  the  Power  and  Righteousness  of  God  as 
shown  forth  in  the  deliverance  of  His  people  from 
Babylon.  Accordingly,  at  present  we  pass  over  xlii. 
1-9,  keeping  this  firmly  in  mind,  however,  that  God 
has  appointed  for  His  work  upon  earth,  including,  as 
it  does,  the  ingathering  of  His  people  and  the  con- 
version of  the  Gentiles,  a  Servant, — a  human  figure  of 
lofty  character  and  unfailing  perseverance,  who  makes 
God's  work  of  redemption  his  own,  puts  his  heart  into  it, 
and  is  upheld  by  God's  hand.  God,  let  us  understand, 
has  committed  His  cause  upon  earth  to  a  human  agent. 
God's  commission  of  His  Servant  is  hailed  by  a 
hymn.  Earth  answers  the  proclamation  of  the  new 
things  which  the  Almighty  has  declared  (ver.  9)  by  a 
new  song  (yv.  10-13).  But  this  song  does  not  sing  of 
the  Servant ;  its  subject  is  Jehovah  Himself. 

Sing  to  Jehovah  a  new  song, 
His  praise  from  the  end  of  the  earth  ; 
Ye  that  go  down  to  the  sea^  and  its  fulness^ 
IsleSy  and  their  dwellers  ! 
Let  be  loud, — the  wilderness  and  its  townships, 
Villages  that  Kedar  inhabits  ! 
Let  them  ring  out, — the  dwellers  of  Sela  I 
From  the  top  of  the  hills  let  them  shout ! 

*  See  Introduction. 


134  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Let  them  give  to  Jehovah  the  glory, 
And  publish  His  praise  in  the  Isles  I 
Jehovah  as  hero  goes  forth, 
As  a  man  of  war  stirs  up  zeal^ 
Shouts  the  alarm  and  battle  cry. 
Against  his  foes  proves  Himself  hero. 

The  terms  of  the  last  four  Hnes  are  miHtary.  Most  of 
them  will  be  found  in  the  historical  books,  in  descrip- 
tions of  the  onset  of  Israel's  battles  with  the  heathen. 
But  it  is  no  human  warrior  to  whom  they  are  here 
applied.  They  who  sing  have  forgotten  the  Servant. 
Their  hearts  are  warm  only  with  this,  that  Jehovah 
Himself  will  come  down  to  earth  to  give  the  alarm,  and 
to  bear  the  brunt  of  the  battle.  And  to  such  a  hope 
He  now  responds,  speaking  also  of  Himself  and  not  of 
the  Servant.  His  words  are  very  intense,  and  glow 
and  strain  with  inward  travail. 

/  have  long  time  kept  my  peace^ 
Am  dumb  and  hold  myself  in  : 
Like  a  woman  in  travail  I  gasp. 
Pant  and  palpitate  together. 

Remember  it  is  God  who  speaks  these  words  of  Him- 
self, and  then  think  what  they  mean  of  unshareable 
thought  and  pain,  of  solitary  yearning  and  effort.  But 
from  the  pain  comes  forth  at  last  the  power. 

/  waste  mountains  and  hills, 
And  all  their  herb  I  parch; 
And  I  have  set  rivers  for  islands ^ 
And  marshes  I  parch. 

Yet  it  is  not  the  passion  of  a  mere  physical  effort  that 
is  in  God;  not  mere  excitement  of  war  that  thrills 
Him.     But  the  suffering  of  men  is  upon  Him,  and  He 


xlii.  13-17.]  THE  PASSION  OF  GOD.  135 

has  taken  their  redemption  to  heart.  He  had  said  to 
His  Servant  (vv.  6,  y)  :  I  give  thee  .  .  ,  to  open  the 
blind  eyes,  to  bring  out  from  prison  the  bound,  from  the 
house  of  bondage  the  dwellers  in  darkness.  But  here 
He  Himself  puts  on  the  sympathy  and  strain  of  that 
work. 

And  I  will  make  the  blind  to  walk  in  a  way  they  know  not, 

By  paths  they  know  not  I  will  guide  them  ; 

Turn  darkness  before  them  to  light, 

And  serrated  land  to  level. 

These  are  the  things  that  I  do,  and  do  not  remit  them. 

They  fall  backwards,  with  shame  are  they  shamed, 

That  put  trust  in  a  Carving, 

That  do  say  to  a  Cast,   Ye  are  our  Gods.* 

Now  this  pair  of  passages,  in  one  of  which  God  lays 
the  work  of  redemption  upon  His  human  agent,  and  in 
another  Himself  puts  on  its  passion  and  travail,  are 
only  one  instance  of  a  duality  that  runs  through  the 
whole  of  the  Old  Testament.  As  we  repeatedly  saw 
in  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah  himself, f  there  is  a  double 
promise  of  the  future  through  the  Old  Testament : — 
first,  that  God  will  achieve  the  salvation  of  Israel  by  an 
extraordinary  human  personality,  who  is  figured  now 
as  a  King,  now  as  a  Prophet  and  now  as  a  Priest; 
but,  second  also,  that  God  Himself,  in  undeputed,  un- 
shared power,  will  come  visibly  to  deliver  His  people 
and  to  reign  over  them.  These  two  lines  of  prophecy 
run  parallel,  and  even  entangled,  through  the  Old 
Testament,  but  v/ithin  its  bounds  no  attempt  is  made 
to  reconcile  them.  They  pass  from  it  still  separate,  to 
find  their  synthesis,  as  we  all  know,  in  One  of  whom 

*  So  the  grammar  of  the  original.  f  Vol.  i.,  pp.  144,  334. 


136  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

each  is  the  incomplete  prophecy.  While  considering 
the  Messianic  prophecies  of  Isaiah,  which  run  upon  the 
first  of  these  two  lines,  we  pointed  out,  that,  though 
standing  in  historical  connection  with  Christ,  they  were 
not  prophecies  of  His  divinity.  Lofty  and  expansive 
as  were  the  titles  they  attributed  to  the  Messiah,  these 
titles  did  not  imply  more  than  an  earthly  ruler  of 
extraordinary  power  and  dignity.  But  we  added  that 
in  the  other  and  concurrent  line  of  prophecy,  and 
especially  in  those  well-developed  stages  of  it  which 
appear  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.,  we  should  find  the  true  Old 
Testament  promise  of  the  Deity  in  human  form  and 
tabernacling  among  men.  We  urged  that,  if  the 
divinity  of  Christ  was  to  be  seen  in  the  Old  Testament, 
we  should  more  naturally  find  it  in  the  line  of  promise, 
which  speaks  of  God  Himself  descending  to  battle  and 
to  suffer  by  the  side  of  men,  than  in  the  Une  that  lifts  a 
human  ruler  almost  to  the  right  hand  of  God.  We  have 
now  come  to  a  passage,  which  gives  us  the  opportunity 
of  testing  this  connection,  which  we  have  alleged 
between  the  so-called  anthropomorphism  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  the  Incarnation,  which  is  the  glory  of 
the  New. 

When  God  presents  Himself  in  the  Old  Testament 
as  His  people's  Saviour,  it  is  not  always  as  Isaiah 
mostly  saw  Him,  in  awful  power  and  majesty — a  Kmg 
high  and  lifted  up,  or  as  coming  from  far,  burning  and 
thick- rising  smoke,  and  overflowing  streams;  causing  the 
peal  of  His  voice  to  be  heard,  and  the  lighting  down  of  His 
arm  to  be  seen,  in  the  fury  of  anger  and  devouring  fire — 
bursting  and  torrent  and  hailstones*  But  in  a  large 
number  of  passages,  of  which  the  one  before  us  and  the 


♦  Isa.  xxxi. 


xlii.  13-17.]  THE  PASSION  OF  GOD.  137 

famous  first  six  verses  of  ch.  Ixiii.  are  perhaps  the  most 
forcible,  the  Almighty  is  clothed  with  human  passion 
and  agony.  He  is  described  as  loving,  hating,  showing 
zeal  or  jealousy,  fear,  repentance  and  scorn.  He  bides 
His  time,  suddenly  awakes  to  effort,  and  makes  that 
effort  in  weakness,  pain  and  struggle,  so  extreme  that 
He  likens  Himself  not  only  to  a  solitary  man  in  the 
ardour  of  battle,  but  to  a  woman  in  her  unshareable 
hour  of  travail.  To  use  a  technical  word,  the  prophets 
in  their  descriptions  of  God  do  not  hesitate  to  be 
anthropopathic — imparting  to  Deity  the  passions  of 
men. 

In  order  to  appreciate  the  full  effect  of  this  habit  of 
the  Jewish  religion,  we  must  contrast  it  with  some 
principles  of  that  religion,  with  which  at  first  it  seems 
impossible  to  reconcile  it. 

No  religion  more  necessarily  implies  the  spirituality 
of  God  than  does  the  Jewish.  It  is  true  that  in  the 
pages  of  the  Old  Testament,  you  will  nowhere  find  this 
formally  expressed.  No  Jewish  prophet  ever  said  in  so 
many  words  what  Jesus  said  to  the  woman  of  Samaria, 
God  is  spirit.  In  our  own  prophecy,  spirit  is  frequently 
used,  not  to  define  the  nature  of  God,  but  to  express 
His  power  and  the  effectiveness  of  His  will.  But  the 
Jewish  Scriptures  insist  throughout  upon  the  sublimity 
of  God,  or,  to  use  their  own  term,  His  holiness.  He  is 
the  Most  High,  Creator,  Lord, — the  Force  and  Wisdom 
that  are  behind  nature  and  history.  It  is  a  sin  to  make 
any  image  of  Him  ;  it  is  an  error  to  liken  Him  to  man. 
/  am  God  and  not  man,  the  Holy  One*  We  have  seen 
how  absolutely  the  Divine  omnipotence  and  sublimity  are 
expressed  by  our  own  prophet,  and  we  shall  find  Him 

*  Hosea  xi.  9. 


138  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

again  speaking  thus  :  My  thoughts  are  not  your  thoughts  ^ 
neither  are  your  ways  My  ways,  saith  the  Lord.  For  as  the 
heavens  are  higher  than  the  earth,  so  are  My  ways  higher 
than  your  ways,  and  My  thoughts  than  your  thoughts* 
But  perhaps  the  doctrine  of  our  prophet  which  most 
effectively  sets  forth  God's  loftiness  and  spirituality  is 
his  doctrine  of  God's  word.  God  has  but  to  speak  and 
a  thing  is  created  or  a  deed  done.  He  calls  and  the 
agent  He  needs  is  there ;  He  sets  His  word  upon  him 
and  the  work  is  as  good  as  finished.  My  ivord  that 
goeth  forth  out  oj  My  mouth,  it  shall  not  return  unto  Me 
void,  but  it  shall  accomplish  that  which  I  please,  and 
shall  prosper  in  the  thing  whereto  I  sent  /V.f  Omnipo- 
tence could  not  farther  go.  It  would  seem  that  all 
man  needed  from  God  was  a  word, — the  giving  of  a 
command,  that  a  thing  must  be. 

Yet  it  is  precisely  in  our  prophecy,  that  we  find  the 
most  extreme  ascriptions  to  the  Deity  of  personal  effort, 
weakness  and  pain.  The  same  chapters  which  celebrate 
God's  sublimity  and  holiness,  which  reveal  the  eternal 
counsels  of  God  working  to  their  inevitable  ends  in  time, 
which  also  insist,  as  this  very  chapter  does,  that  for  the 
performance  of  works  of  mercy  and  morality  God  brings 
to  bear  the  slow  creative  forces  that  are  in  nature,  or 
which  again  (as  in  other  chapters)  attribute  all  to  the 
power  of  His  simple  word, — these  same  Scriptures 
suddenly  change  their  style  and,  after  the  most  human 
manner,  clothe  the  Deity  in  the  travail  and  passion  of 
flesh.  Why  is  it,  that  instead  of  aspiring  still  higher 
from  those  sublime  conceptions  of  God  to  some  con- 
summate expression  of  His  unity,  as  for  instance  in 
Islam,  or  of  His    spirituality,    as   in    certain    modern 

•  Ch.lv.  89.  t  Ihid,vcv.  II. 


xlii.  13-17.]  THE  PASSION  OF  GOD.  139 

philosophies,  prophecy  dashes  thus  thunderously  down 
upon  our  hearts  with  the  message,  scattered  in  count- 
less, broken  words,  that  all  this  omnipotence  and  all 
this  sublimity  are  expended  and  realised  for  men  only 
in  passion  and  in  pain  ? 

It  is  no  answer,  which  is  given  by  many  in  our  day, 
that  after  all  the  prophets  were  but  frail  men,  unable 
to  stay  upon  the  high  flight  to  which  they  sometimes 
soared,  and  obliged  to  sacrifice  their  logic  to  the  fond- 
ness of  their  hearts  and  the  general  habit  of  man  to 
make  his  god  after  his  own  image.  No  easy  sneer 
like  that  can  solve  so  profound  a  moral  paradox.  We 
must  seek  the  solution  otherwise,  and  earnest  minds 
will  probably  find  it  along  one  or  other  of  the  two 
following  paths. 

I.  The  highest  moral  ideal  is  not,  and  never  can  be, 
the  righteousness  that  is  regnant,  but  that  which  is 
militant  and  agonizing.  It  is  the  deficiency  of  many 
religions,  that  while  representing  God  as  the  Judge  and 
almighty  executor  of  righteousness,  they  have  not 
revealed  Him  as  its  advocate  and  champion  as  well. 
Christ  gave  us  a  very  plain  lesson  upon  this.  As  He 
clearly  showed,  when  He  refused  the  offer  of  all  the 
kingdoms  of  the  world,  the  highest  perfection  is  not  to 
be  omnipotence  upon  the  side  of  virtue,  but  to  be  there 
as  patience,  sympathy  and  love.  To  will  righteousness, 
and  to  rule  life  from  above  in  favour  of  righteousness, 
is  indeed  Divine  ;  but  if  these  were  the  highest  attributes 
of  divinity,  and  if  they  exhausted  the  Divine  interest 
in  our  race,  then  man  himself,  with  his  conscience  to 
sacrifice  himself  on  behalf  of  justice  or  of  truth, — man 
himself,  with  his  instinct  to  make  the  sins  of  others 
his  burden,  and  their  purity  his  agonizing  endeavour, 
would  indeed  be  higher  than  his  God.     Had  Jehovah 


146  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

been  nothing  but  the  righteous  Judge  of  all  the  earth, 
then  His  witnesses  and  martyrs,  and  His  prophets  who 
took  to  themselves  the  conscience  and  reproach  of  their 
people's  sins,  would  have  been  as  much  more  admirable 
than  Himself,  as  the  soldier  who  serves  his  country  on 
the  battle-field  or  lays  down  his  life  for  his  people  is 
more  deserving  of  their  gratitude  and  more  certain  of 
their  devotion,  than  the  king  who  equips  him,  sends  him 
forth — and  himself  stays  at  home. 

The  God  of  the  Old  Testament  is  not  such  a  God. 
In  the  moral  warfare  to  which  He  has  predestined  His 
creatures,  He  Himself  descends  to  participate.  He  is 
not  abstract — that  is,  withdrawn — HoHness,  nor  mere 
sovereign  Justice  enthroned  in  heaven.  He  is  One 
who  arises  and  comes  doivn  for  the  salvation  of  men, 
who  makes  virtue  His  Cause  and  righteousness  His 
Passion.  He  is  no  whit  behind  the  chiefest  of  His 
servants.  No  seraph  burns  as  God  burns  with  ardour 
for  justice  ;  no  angel  of  the  presence  flies  more  swiftly 
than  Himself  to  the  front  rank  of  the  failing  battle. 
The  human  Servant,  who  is  pictured  in  our  prophecy,  is 
more  absolutely  identified  with  suffering  and  agonizing 
men  than  any  angel  could  be ;  but  even  he  does  not 
stand  more  closely  by  their  side,  nor  suffer  more  on 
their  behalf,  than  the  God  who  sends  him  forth.  For 
the  Lord  stirreth  up  jealousy  like  a  man  of  war;  in  all  His 
people^s  affliction  He  is  afflicted;  against  His  enemies  He 
beareth  Himself  as  a  hero.  So  much  from  the  side  of 
righteousness. 

2.  But  take  the  equally  Divine  attribute  of  love.  When 
a  religion  affirms  that  God  is  love,  it  gives  immense 
hostages.  What  is  love  without  pity  and  compassion 
and  sympathy  ?  and  what  are  these  but  self-imposed 
weakness  and  pain  ?     Christ  has  told  us  of  the  greatest 


xlii.  13-17.]  THE  PASSION  OF  GOD.  141 

love.     Greater  love  than  this  hath  no  man,  that  a  man 
lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends ;    and    the    cost    and 
sacrifice  in  which   He   thus  outmatched  man  is  one  that 
the  prophets  before  He  came  did  not  hesitate  to  impute 
to  God.     As  far  as  human  language  is  adequate  for 
such  a  task,  they  picture  God's  love  for  men  as  costing 
Him  so  much.     He  painfully  pleads  for  His  people's 
loyalty  ;  He  travails  in  pain  for  their  new  birth  and 
growth  in  holiness  ;  in  all  their  afQiction  He  is  afflicted  ; 
and  He  meets  their  stubbornness,  not  with  the  swift 
sentence  of  outraged  hoHness,  but  with  longsuffering  and 
patience,  if  so  in  the  end  He  may  win  them.     But  the 
pain,    that   is    thus    essentially  inseparable  from  love, 
reaches  its  acme,  when   the  beloved  are  not  only  in 
danger  but  in  sin,  when    not  only  the  future  of  their 
holiness  is  uncertain,  but  their  guilty  past  bars  the  way 
to  any  future  at  all.     We  saw  how  Jeremiah's  love  thus 
took  upon  itself  the  conscience  and  reproach  of  Israel's 
sin  ;  how  much  distress  and  anguish,   how  much   sym- 
pathy and  self-sacrificing  labour,  and  at  last  how  much 
hopeless  endurance  of  the  common  calamity,  that  sin 
cost  the  noble  prophet,  though  he  might  so  easily  have 
escaped  it  all.     Now  even  thus  does  God  deal  with  His 
people's  sins ;  not  only  setting  them  in  the  light  of  His 
awful    countenance,   but  taking  them  upon  His  heart ; 
making  them  not  only  the  object  of  His  hate,  but  the 
anguish  and  the  effort  of  His  love.     Jeremiah  was  a 
weak  mortal,  and  God  is  the  Omnipotent.     Therefore, 
the  issue  of  His  agony  shall  be  what  His  servant's  never 
could  effect,  the  redemption  of  Israel  from  sin  ;  but  in 
sympathy  and  in  travail  the  Deity,  though  omnipotent, 
is  no  whit  behind  the  man. 

We  have  said  enough  to  prove  our  case,  that  the  true 


142  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Old  Testament  prophecy  of  the  nature  and  work  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  found  not  so  much  in  the  long  promise 
of  the  exalted  human  ruler,  for  whom  Israel's  eyes 
looked,  as  in  the  assurance  of  God's  own  descent  to 
battle  with  His  people's  foes  and  to  bear  their  sins.  In 
this  God,  omnipotent,  yet  in  His  zeal  and  love  capable 
of  passion,  who  before  the  Incarnation  was  afflicted 
in  all  His  people's  affliction,  and  before  the  Cross  made 
their  sin  His  burden  and  their  salvation  His  agony,  we 
see  the  love  that  was  in  Jesus  Christ.  For  Jesus,  too,  is 
absolute  holiness,  yet  not  far  off.  He,  too,  is  righteous- 
ness mihtant  at  our  side,  militant  and  victorious.  He, 
too,  has  made  our  greatest  suffering  and  shame  His 
own  problem  and  endeavour.  He  is  anxious  for  us  just 
where  conscience  bids  us  be  most  anxious  about  our- 
selves. He  helps  us,  because  he  feels  v/hen  we  feel 
our  helplessness  the  most.  Never  before  or  since  in 
humanity  has  righteousness  been  perfectly  victorious  as 
in  Him.  Never  before  or  since,  in  the  whole  range  of 
being,  has  any  one  felt  as  He  did  all  the  sin  of  man  with 
all  the  conscience  of  God.  He  claims  to  forgive,  as  God 
forgives  ;  to  be  able  to  save,  as  we  know  only  God  can 
save.  And  the  proof  of  these  claims,  apart  from  the 
experience  of  their  fulfilment  in  our  own  lives,  is  that 
the  same  infinite  love  was  in  Him,  the  same  agony 
and  willingness  to  sacrifice  Himself  for  men,  which  we 
have  seen  made  evident  in  the  Passion  of  God. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION, 
Isaiah  xliii.-xlviii. 

WE  have  now  surveyed  the  governing  truths  of 
Isa.  xl.-xlviii. :  the  One  God,  omnipotent  and 
righteous ;  the  One  People,  His  servants  and  witnesses 
to  the  world  ;  the  nothingness  of  all  other  gods  and 
idols  before  Him  ;  the  vanity  and  ignorance  of  their 
diviners,  compared  with  His  power,  who,  because  He 
has  a  purpose  working  through  all  history,  and  is  both 
faithful  to  it  and  almighty  to  bring  it  to  pass,  can 
inspire  His  prophets  to  declare  beforehand  the  facts 
that  shall  be.  He  has  brought  His  people  into  captivity 
■for  a  set  time,  the  end  of  which  is  now  near.  Cyrus 
the  Persian,  already  upon  the  horizon,  and  threatening 
Babylon,  is  to  be  their  deliverer.  But  whomever  He 
raises  up  on  Israel's  behalf,  God  is  always  Himself  their 
foremost  champion.  Not  only  is  His  word  upon  them, 
but  His  heart  is  among  them.  He  bears  the  brunt  of 
their  battle,  and  their  deliverance,  political  and  spiritual, 
Is  His  own  travail  and  agony.  Whomever  else  He 
summons  on  the  stage,  He  remains  the  true  hero  of  the 
drama. 

Now,  chs.  xliii.-xlviii.  are  simply  the  elaboration  and 
more  urgent  offer  of  all  these  truths,  under  the  sense  of 
the  rapid  approach  of  Cyrus  upon  Babylon.  They  declare 


144  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

again  God's  unity,  omnipotence  and  righteousness, 
they  confirm  His  forgiveness  of  His  people,  they  repeat 
the  laughter  at  the  idols,  they  give  us  nearer  views  of 
Cyrus,  they  answer  the  doubts  that  many  orthodox 
Israelites  felt  about  this  Gentile  Messiah ;  chs.  xlvi.  and 
xlvii.  describe  Babylon  as  if  on  the  eve  of  her  fall, 
and  ch.  xlviii.,  after  Jehovah  more  urgently  than  ever 
presses  upon  reluctant  Israel  to  show  the  results  of  her 
discipline  in  Babylon,  closes  with  a  call  to  leave  the 
accursed  city,  as  if  the  way  were  at  last  open.  This 
call  has  been  taken  as  the  mark  of  a  definite  division  of 
our  prophecy.  But  too  much  must  not  be  put  upon  it. 
It  is  indeed  the  first  call  to  depart  from  Babylon ;  but 
it  is  not  the  last.  And  although  ch.  xlix.,  and  the 
chapters  following,  speak  more  of  Zion's  Restoration  and 
less  of  the  Captivity,  yet  ch.  xlix.  is  closely  connected 
with  ch.  xlviii.,  and  we  do  not  finally  leave  Babylon 
behind  till  ch.  lii.  12.  Nevertheless,  in  the  meantime 
ch.  xlviii.  will  form  a  convenient  point  on  which  to 
keep  our  eyes. 

Cyrus,  when  we  last  saw  him,  was  upon  the  banks 
of  the  Halys,  546  B.C.,  startling  Croesus  and  the  Lydian 
Empire  into  extraordinary  efforts,  both  of  a  religious  and 
political  kind,  to  avert  his  attack.  He  had  just  come 
from  an  unsuccessful  attempt  upon  the  northern  frontier 
of  Babylon,  and  at  first  it  appeared  as  if  he  were  to 
find  no  better  fortune  on  the  western  border  of  Lydia. 
In  spite  of  his  superior  numbers,  the  Lydian  army 
kept  the  ground  on  which  he  met  them  in  battle.  But 
Croesus,  thinking  that  the  war  was  over  for  the  season, 
fell  back  soon  afterwards  on  Sardis,  and  Cyrus,  fol- 
lowing him  up  by  forced  marches,  surprised  him  under 
the  walls  of  the  city,  routed  the  famous  Lydian  cavalry 
by  the  novel  terror  of  his  camels,  and  after  a  siege  of 


xli.,  xlv.]    FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.  145 

fourteen  days  sent  a  few  soldiers  to  scale  a  side  of  the 
citadel  too  steep  to  be  guarded  by  the  defenders ;  and 
so  Sardis,  its  king  and  its  empire,  lay  at  his  feet.  This 
Lydian  campaign  of  Cyrus,  which  is  related  by  Hero- 
dotus, is  worth  noting  here  for  the  light  it  throws  on 
the  character  of  the  man,  whom  according  to  our 
prophecy,  God  chose  to  be  His  chief  instrument  in 
that  generation.  If  his  turning  back  from  Babylonia, 
eight  years  before  he  was  granted  an  easy  entrance  to 
her  capital,  shows  how  patiently  Cyrus  could  wait  upon 
fortune,  his  quick  march  upon  Sardis  is  the  brilliant 
evidence  that  when  fortune  showed  the  way,  she  found 
this  Persian  an  obedient  and  punctual  follower.  The 
Lydian  campaign  forms  as  good  an  illustration  as  we 
shall  find  of  these  texts  of  our  prophet :  He  pursueth 
thenty  he  passeth  in  safety;  by  a  way  he  almost  treads 
not  with  his  feet.  He  cometh  upon  satraps  as  on  mortar, 
and  as  the  potter  treadeth  upon  clay  (xli.  3,  25).  / 
have  holden  his  right  hand  to  bring  down  before  him 
nations,  and  the  loins  of  kings  will  I  loosen, — poor  ungirt 
Croesus,  for  instance,  relaxing  so  foohshly  after  his 
victory ! — to  open  before  him  doors,  and  gates  shall  not 
be  shut, — so  was  Sardis  unready  for  him, — /  go  before 
thee,  and  will  level  the  ridges;  doors  of  brass  I  will  shiver, 
and  bolts  of  iron  cut  in  sunder.  And  I  will  give  to  thee 
treasures  of  darkness,  hidden  riches  of  secret  places 
(xlv.  1-3).  Some  have  found  in  this  an  allusion  to  the 
immense  hoards  of  Croesus,  which  fell  to  Cyrus  with 
Sardis. 

With  Lydia,  the  rest  of  Asia  Minor,  including  the 
cities  of  the  Greeks,  who  held  the  coast  of  the  iEgean, 
was  bound  to  come  into  the  Persian's  hands.  But  the 
process  of  subjection  turned  out  to  be  a  long  one.  The 
Greeks  got  no  help  from  Greece.     Sparta  sent  to  Cyrus 

VOL.  II.  10 


146  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

an  embassy  with  a  threat,  but  the  Persian  laughed  at  it 
and  it  came  to  nothing.  Indeed,  Sparta's  message  was 
only  a  temptation  to  this  irresistible  warrior  to  carry  his 
fortunate  arms  into  Europe.  His  own  presence,  how- 
ever, was  required  in  the  East,  and  his  lieutenants 
found  the  thorough  subjection  of  Asia  Minor  a  task 
requiring  several  years.  It  cannot  have  well  been 
concluded  before  540,  and  while  it  was  in  progress  we 
understand  why  Cyrus  did  not  again  attack  Babylonia. 
Meantime,  he  was  occupied  with  lesser  tribes  to  the 
north  of  Media. 

Cyrus'  second  campaign  against  Babylonia  opened  in 
539.  This  time  he  avoided  the  northern  wall  from 
which  he  had  been  repulsed  in  546.  Attacking 
Babylonia  from  the  east,  he  crossed  the  Tigris,  beat 
the  Babylonian  king  into  Borsippa,  laid  siege  to  that 
fortress  and  marched  on  Babylon,  which  was  held  by  the 
king's  son,  Belshazzar,  Bil-sar-ussur.  All  the  world 
knows  the  supreme  generalship  by  which  Cyrus  is 
said  to  have  captured  Babylon  without  assaulting  the 
walls  from  whose  impregnable  height  their  defenders 
showered  ridicule  upon  him ;  how  he  made  himself 
master  of  Nebuchadrezzar's  great  bason  at  Sepharvaim, 
and  turned  the  Euphrates  into  it ;  and  how,  before  the 
Babylonians  had  time  to  notice  the  dwindling  of  the 
waters  in  their  midst,  his  soldiers  waded  down  the  river 
bed,  and  by  the  river  gates  surprised  the  careless  citizens 
upon  a  night  of  festival.  But  recent  research  makes 
it  more  probable  that  her  inhabitants  themselves  sur- 
rendered Babylon  to  Cyrus. 

Now  it  was  during  the  course  of  the  events  just 
sketched,  but  before  their  culmination  in  the  fall  of 
Babylon,  that  chs.  xliii.-xlviii.  were  composed.  That, 
at  least,  is  what  they  themselves   suggest.     In  three 


xliii.-xlviii.]    FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.      147 

passages,  which  deal  with  Cyrus  or  with  Babylon,  some 
of  the  verbs  are  in  the  past,  some  in  the  future.  Those 
in  the  past  tense  describe  the  calling  and  full  career  of 
Cyrus  or  the  beginning  of  preparations  against  Babylon. 
Those  in  the  future  tense  promise  Babylon's  fall  or 
Cyrus'  completion  of  the  liberation  of  the  Jews.  ThuS; 
in  ch.  xliii.  14  it  is  WTitten  :  For  your  sakes  I  have  sent  to 
Babylon,  and  I  will  bring  down  as  fugitives  all  of  them, 
and  the  Clialdeans  in  the  ships  of  their  rejoicing.  Surely 
these  words  announce  that  Babylon's  fate  was  already 
on  the  way  to  her,  but  not  yet  arrived.  Again,  in  the 
verses  which  deal  with  Cyrus  himself,  xlv.  1-6,  which 
we  have  partly  quoted,  the  Persian  is  already  grasped 
by  his  right  hand  by  God,  and  called;  but  his  career  is 
not  over,  for  God  promises  to  do  various  things  for  him. 
The  third  passage  is  ver.  13  of  the  same  chapter,  where 
Jehovah  says,  /  have  stirred  him  up  in  righteousness, 
and,  changing  to  the  future  tense,  all  his  ways  will  I 
level ;  he  shall  build  My  city,  and  My  captivity  shall  he 
send  away.  What  could  be  more  precise  than  the 
tenor  of  all  these  passages  ?  If  people  would  only 
take  our  prophet  at  his  word;  if  with  all  their  behef 
in  the  inspiration  of  the  text  of  Scripture,  they  would 
only  pay  attention  to  its  grammar,  which  surely,  on 
their  own  theory,  is  also  thoroughly  sacred,  then 
there  would  be  to-day  no  question  about  the  date  of 
Isa.  xl.-xlviii.  As  plainly  as  grammar  can  enable  it 
to  do,  this  prophecy  speaks  of  Cyrus'  campaign  against 
Babylon  as  already  begun,  but  of  its  completion  as  still 
future.  Ch.  xlviii.,  it  is  true,  assumes  events  as  still 
farther  developed,  but  we  will  come  to  it  afterwards. 

During  Cyrus'  preparations,  then,  for  invading 
Babylonia,  and  in  prospect  of  her  certain  fall,  chs. 
xliii.-xlviii.  repeat  with  greater  detail  and  impetuosity 


148  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  truths,  which  we  have  already  gathered  from  chs. 
xl.-xlii. 

I.  And  first  of  these  comes  naturally  the  omnipotence, 
righteousness  and  personal  urgency  of  Jehovah  Him- 
self. Everything  is  again  assured  by  His  power  and 
purpose ;  everything  starts  from  His  initiative.  To 
illustrate  this  we  could  quote  from  almost  every 
verse  in  the  chapters  under  consideration.  /,  / 
Jehovah,  and  there  is  none  beside  Me  a  Saviour.  I 
am  God — El.  Also  from  to-day  on  I  am  He.*  I  will 
worky  and  who  shall  let  it  ?  I  am  Jehovah.  I,  I  am  He 
that  blotteth  out  thy  transgressions.  I  First,  and  I  Last ; 
and  beside  Me  there  is  no  God — Elohim.  Is  there  a  God, 
Eloah,  beside  Me?  yea,  there  is  no  Rock;  I  know  not 
any.  I  Jehovah,  Maker,  of  all  things.  I  am  Jehovah, 
and  there  is  none  else  ;  beside  Me  there  is  no  God.  I  am 
Jehovah,  and  there  is  none  else.  Former  of  light  and 
Creator  of  darkness.  Maker  of  peace  and  Creator  of  evil, 
I  am  Jehovah,  Maker  of  all  these.  I  am  Jehovah^  and 
there  is  none  else,  God,  Elohim,  beside  Me,  God- 
Righteous,  El  Ssaddiq,  and  a  Saviour:  there  is  none 
except  Me.  Face  Me,  and  be  saved  all  ends  of  the  earth  ; 
for  I  am  God,  El,  and  there  is  none  else.  Only  in  Jehovah 
— of  Me  shall  they  say — are  righteousnesses  and  strength. 
I  am  God,  El,  and  there  is  none  else;  God,  Elohim,  and 
there  is  none  like  Me.  I  am  He  ;  I  am  First,  yea,  I  am 
Last.     I,  I  have  spoken.     I  have  declared  it. 

It  is  of  advantage  to  gather  together  so  many 
passages — and  they  might  have  been  increased — from 
chs.  xliii.-xlviii.  They  let  us  see  at  a  glance  what  a  part 
the  first  personal  pronoun  plays  in  the  Divine  revela- 


*  From  to-day  on,  Ez.  xlviii.  35  ;  but  others  take  itAlso  to-day  I  ant 
He. 


xliii.-xlviii.]     FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.      14c) 

tion.  Beneath  every  religious  truth  is  the  unity  of 
God.  Behind  every  great  movement  is  the  personal 
initiative  and  urgency  of  God.  And  revelation  is,  in 
its  essence,  not  the  mere  publication  of  truths  about 
God,  but  the  personal  presence  and  communication  to 
men  of  God  Himself  Three  words  are  used  for  Deity — • 
El,  Eloah,  Elohim — exhausting  the  Divine  terminology. 
But  besides  these,  there  is  a  formula  which  puts  the 
point  even  more  sharply  :  /  am  He.  It  was  the  habit 
of  the  Hebrew  nation,  and  indeed  of  all  Semitic  peoples, 
who  shared  their  reverent  unwillingness  to  name  the 
Deity,  to  speak  of  Him  simply  by  the  third  personal 
pronoun.  The  Book  of  Job  is  full  of  instances  of  the 
habit,  and  it  also  appears  in  many  proper  names,  as 
Eli-hu,  '' My  God-is-He,"  Abi-hu,  "  My-Father-is-He." 
Renan  adduces  the  practice  as  evidence  that  the 
Semites  were  "  naturally  monotheistic,"  * — as  evidence 
for  what  was  never  the  case !  But  if  there  was  no 
original  Semitic  monotheism  for  this  practice  to  prove, 
we  may  yet  take  the  practice  as  evidence  for  the  person- 
ality of  the  Hebrew  God.  The  God  of  the  prophets 
is  not  the  //,  which  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  so  strangely 
thought  he  had  identified  in  their  writings,  and  which, 
in  philosophic  language,  that  unsophisticated  Orientals 
would  never  have  understood,  he  so  cumbrously  named 
'*a  tendency  not  ourselves  that  makes  for  righteous- 


*  Renan's  theory  of  the  "  natural  monotheism  "  of  the  Semites  was 
first  published  in  his  Histoire  des  Lavtgues  Semitiques  some  forty  years 
ago.  Nearly  every  Semitic  scholar  of  repute  found  some  occasion  or 
other  to  refute  it.  But  with  Renan's  charming  genius  for  neglecting 
all  facts  that  disturb  an  artistic  arrangement  of  his  subject,  the  over- 
whelming evidence  against  the  natural  monotheism  of  the  Semite  has 
been  ignored  by  him,  and  he  repeats  his  theory  unmodified  in  his 
Histoire  du  Peitple  d'Israely  i.,  31,  published  1888. 


156  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

ness.'*  Not  anything  like  this  is  the  God,  who  here 
urges  His  self-consciousness  upon  men.  He  says,  /  am 
He, — the  unseen  Power,  who  was  too  awful  and  too  dark 
to  be  named,  but  about  whom,  when  in  their  terror  and 
ignorance  His  worshippers  sought  to  describe  Him, 
they  assumed  that  He  was  a  Person,  and  called  Him, 
as  they  would  have  called  one  of  themselves,  by  a 
personal  pronoun.  By  the  mouth  of  His  prophet  this 
vague  and  awful  He  declares  Himself  as  /,  /,  /, — no 
mere  tendency,  but  a  living  Heart  and  urgent  Will, 
personal  character  and  force  of  initiative,  from  which 
all  tendencies  move  and  take  their  direction  and  strength. 
/  am  He. 

History  is  strewn  v.ith  the  errors  of  those,  who  have 
sought  from  God  something  else  than  Himself.  All  the 
degradation,  even  of  the  highest  religions,  has  sprung 
from  this,  that  their  votaries  forgot  that  religion  was  a 
communion  with  God  Himself,  a  life  in  the  power  of 
His  character  and  will,  and  employed  it  as  the  mere 
communication  either  of  material  benefits  or  of  intellec- 
tual ideas.  It  has  been  the  mistake  of  millions  to  see 
in  revelation  nothing  but  the  telling  of  fortunes,  the 
recovery  of  lost  things,  decision  in  quarrels,  direction 
in  war,  or  the  bestowal  of  some  personal  favour.  Such 
are  like  the  person,  of  whom  St.  Luke  tells  us,  who 
saw  nothing  in  Christ  but  the  recoverer  of  a  bad  debt : 
Master,  speak  unto  my  brother  that  he  divide  the  inherit- 
ance with  me ;  and  their  superstition  is  as  far  from  true 
faith  as  the  prodigal's  old  heart,  when  he  said.  Give  me 
the  portion  of  goods  that  falleth  unto  me,  was  from  the 
other  heart,  when,  in  his  poverty  and  woe,  he  cast 
himself  utterly  upon  his  Father  :  /  will  arise  and  go  to 
my  Father,  But  no  less  a  mistake  do  those  make,  who 
seek  from  God  not  Himself,  but  only  intellectual  in- 


xliii.-xlviii.]     FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.       151 

formation.  The  first  Reformers  did  well,  who  brought 
the  common  soul  to  the  personal  grace  of  God ;  but 
many  of  their  successors,  in  a  controversy,  whose  dust 
obscured  the  sun  and  allowed  them  to  see  but  the 
length  of  their  own  weapons,  used  Scripture  chiefly  as 
a  store  of  proofs  for  separate  doctrines  of  the  faith,  and 
forgot  that  God  Himself  was  there  at  all.  And  though 
in  these  days  we  seek  from  the  Bible  many  desirable 
things,  such  as  history,  philosophy,  morals,  formulas  of 
assurance  of  salvation,  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  maxims 
for  conduct,  yet  all  these  will  avail  us  little,  until  we 
have  found  behind  them  the  hving  Character,  the  Will, 
the  Grace,  the  Urgency,  the  Almighty  Power,  by  trust 
in  whom  and  communion  with  whom  alone  they  are 
added  unto  us. 

Now  the  deity,  who  claims  in  these  chapters  to  be 
the  One,  Sovereign  God,  was  the  deity  of  a  Httle  tribe. 
/  am  Jehovahy  I  Jehovah  am  God,  I  Jehovah  am  He. 
We  cannot  too  much  impress  ourselves  with  the 
historical  wonder  of  this.  In  a  world,  which  contained 
Babylon  and  Egypt  with  their  large  empires,  Lydia 
with  all  her  wealth,  and  the  Medes  with  all  their  force  ; 
which  was  already  feeling  the  possibilities  of  the  great 
Greek  life,  and  had  the  Persians,  the  masters  of  the 
future,  upon  its  threshold, — it  was  the  god  of  none  of 
these,  but  of  the  obscurest  tribe  of  their  bondsmen, 
who  claimed  the  Divine  Sovereignty  for  Himself;  it 
was  the  pride  of  none  of  these,  but  the  faith  of  the 
most  despised  and,  at  its  heart,  most  mournful  religion 
of  the  time,  which  offered  an  explanation  of  history, 
claimed  the  future  and  was  assured  that  the  biggest 
forces  of  the  world  were  working  for  its  ends.  Thus 
saith  Jehovah,  King  of  Israel,  and  his  Redeemer  Jehovah 
0/  Hosts,  I  First,  and  I  Last;  and  beside  Me  there  is  no 


152  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

God.  Is  there  a  God  beside  Me  ?  yea,  there  is  no  Rock; 
I  know  not  any. 

By  itself  this  were  a  cheap  claim,  and  might  have 
been  made  by  any  idol  among  them,  were  it  not  for 
the  additional  proofs  by  which  it  is  supported.  We 
may  summarise  these  additional  proofs  as  threefold : 
Laughter,  Gospel  and  Control  of  History, — three 
marvels  in  the  experience  of  exiles.  People,  mourn- 
fullest  and  most  despised,  their  mouths  were  to  be 
filled  with  the  laughter  of  Truth's  scorn  upon  the 
idols  of  their  conquerors.  Men,  most  tormented  by 
conscience  and  filled  with  the  sense  of  sin,  they  were 
to  hear  the  gospel  of  forgiveness.  Nation,  against 
whom  all  fact  seemed  to  be  working,  their  God  told 
them,  alone  of  all  nations  of  the  world,  that  He 
controlled  for  their  sake  the  facts  of  to-day  and  the 
issues  of  to-morrow. 

2.  A  burst  of  laughter  comes  very  weirdly  out  of 
the  Exile.  But  we  have  already  seen  the  intellectual 
right  to  scorn  which  these  crushed  captives  had.  They 
were  monotheists  and  their  enemies  were  image 
worshippers.  Monotheism,  even  in  its  rudest  forms, 
raises  men  intellectually, — it  is  difficult  to  say  by  how 
many  degrees.  Indeed,  degrees  do  not  measure  the 
mental  difference  between  an  idolater  and  him  who 
serves  with  his  mind,  as  well  as  with  all  his  heart 
and  soul.  One  God,  Maker  of  heaven  and  earth  :  it  is 
a  difference  that  is  absolute.  Israel  in  captivity  was 
conscious  of  this,  and  therefore,  although  the  souls  of 
those  sad  men  were  filled  beyond  any  in  the  world 
with  the  heaviness  of  sorrow  and  the  humility  of 
guilt,  their  proud  faces  carried  a  scorn  they  had  every 
right  to  wear,  as  the  servants  of  the  One  God.  See 
how  this  scorn  breaks  forth  in  the  following  passage. 


xliv.  9  ff.J      FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.        153 

Its  text  is  corrupt,  and  its  rhythm,  at  this  distance 
from  the  voices  that  utter  it,  is  hardly  perceptible ; 
but  thoroughly  evident  is  its  tone  of  intellectual 
superiority,  and  the  scorn  of  it  gushes  forth  in 
impetuous,  unequal  verse,  the  force  of  which  the 
smoothness  and  dignity  of  our  Authorised  Version  has 
unfortunately  disguised. 

I. 

Formers  of  an  idol  are  all  of  them  waste^ 

And  their  darlings  are  utterly  worthless  ! 
And  their  confessors  * — they  !  they  see  not  and  know  not 

Enough  to  feel  shame. 
Who  has  fashioned  a  god,  or  an  image  has  cast  ? 

^Tis  to  be  utterly  worthless. 
Lo  /  all  that  depend  onH  are  shamed^ 

And  the  gravers  are  less  than  men  : 
Let  all  of  them  gather  and  stand. 

They  quake  and  are  shamed  in  the  lump. 

2. 

Iron-graver — he  takes  f  a  chisel^ 

And  works  with  hot  coals, 

And  with  hammers  he  moulds; 

And  has  done  it  with  the  arm  of  his  strength, 

— Anon  hungers,  and  strength  goes; 

Drinks  no  water,  and  wearies  ! 


*  Literally  witnesses — i.e.,  of  the  idols. 

f  This  word  is  wanting  in  the  text,  which  is  corrupt  here.  Some 
supply  the  word  sharpeneth,  imagining  that  Tin  has  fallen  away 
from  the  beginning  of  the  verse,  through  confusion  with  the  IPI* 
which  ends  the  previous  verse  ;  or  they  bring  nn""  itself,  changing  it 
to  Tin.  But  evidently  7t")3  5J^"in  begins  the  verse ;  cf.  the  parallel 
l3>Vr  SJ'in  which  begins  ver.  13. 


154  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

3. 
Wood-graver — he  draws  a  line^ 
Marks  it  with  pencil , 
Makes  it  with  planes, 
And  with  compasses  marks  it. 
So  has  made  it  the  build  of  a  man, 
To  a  grace  that  is  human — 
To  inhabit  a  house,  cutting  it  cedars* 

Or  one  takes  an  ilex  or  oak, 

And  picks  for  himself  from  the  trees  of  the  ivood; 

One  has  planted  a  pine,  and  the  rain  makes  it  big, 

And  His  therefor  a  man  to  burn. 

And  one  has  taken  of  it,  and  been  warmed; 

Yea,  kindles  and  bakes  bread, — 

Yea,  works  out  a  god,  and  has  worshipped  it ! 

Has  made  it  an  idol^  and  bows  down  before  it! 

Part  of  it  burns  he  with  fire, 

Upon  part  eats  flesh. 

Roasts  roast  and  is  full; 

Yea,  warms  him  and  saith, 

^^  Aha,  I  am  warm,  have  seen  fire!  ^^ 

And  the  rest  of  it — to  a  god  he  has  made — to  his  image  ! 

He  bows  to  it,  worships  it,  prays  to  it. 

And  says,  "  Save  me,  for  my  god  art  thou  !  " 

5. 
They  know  not  and  deem  not  ! 
For  He  hath  bedaubed,  past  seeing,  then  eyes. 
Past  thinking,  their  hearts. 
And  none  takes  to  heart, 


*Here,   again,   the  text  is  uncertain.     With  some  critics  I  have 
borrowed  for  this  verse  the  first  three  words  of  the  following  verse. 


xliv.j         FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.  1 55 

Neither  has  knowledge  nor  sense  to  say, 

"  Part  of  it  burned  I  in  fire — 

Yea,  have  baked  bread  on  its  coals^ 

Do  roast  flesh  that  I  eat^ — 

And  the  rest  o7,  to  a  Disgust  should  I  make  it? 

The  trunk  of  a  tree  should  I  worship  ?  " 

Herder  of  ashes*  a  duped  heart  has  sent  him  astray ^ 

That  he  cannot  deliver  his  souly  neither  say, 

"  Is  there  not  a  lie  in  my  right  hand  ?  " 

Is  not  the  prevailing  note  in  these  verses  surprise  at 
the  mental  condition  of  an  idol-worshipper  ?  They  see 
not  and  know  not  enough  to  feel  shame.  None  takes  it  to 
heart f  neither  has  knowledge  nor  sense  to  say.,  Part  of  it  I 
have  burned  in  fire  .  ,  .  and  the  rest,  should  I  make  it  a 
god?  This  intellectual  confidence,  breaking  out  into 
scorn,  is  the  second  great  token  of  truth,  which  dis- 
tinguishes the  religion  of  this  poor  slave  of  a  people. 

3.  The  third  token  is  its  moral  character.  The 
intellectual  truth  of  a  religion  would  go  for  little,  had 
the  religion  nothing  to  say  to  man's  moral  sense — did 
it  not  concern  itself  with  his  sins,  had  it  no  redemption 
for  his  guilt.  Now,  the  chapters  before  us  are  full  of 
judgement  and  mercy.  If  they  have  scorn  for  the  idols, 
they  have  doom  for  sin,  and  grace  for  the  sinner.  They 
are  no  mere  political  manifesto  for  the  occasion,  declar- 
ing how  Israel  shall  be  liberated  from  Babylon.  They 
are  a  gospel  for  sinners  in  all  time.  By  this  they  farther 
accredit  themselves  as  a  universal  religion. 

God  is  omnipotent,  yet  He  can  do  nothing  for  Israel 
till  Israel  put  away  their  sins.  Those  sins,  and  not  the 
people's  captivity,  are  the  Deity's  chief  concern.     Sin 

*  Perhaps  feeder  on  ashes. 


156  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

has  been  at  the  bottom  of  their  whole  adversity.  This  is 
brought  out  with  all  the  versatility  of  conscience  itself. 
Israel  and  their  God  have  been  at  variance ;  their  sin 
has  been,  what  conscience  feels  the  most,  a  sin  against 
love.  Yet  not  upon  Me  hast  thou  called,  O  Jacob;  how 
hast  thou  been  wearied  with  Me,  O  Israel.  .  .  .  I  have 
not  made  thee  to  slave  with  offerings,  nor  wearied  thee 
with  incense  .  .  .  but  thou  hast  made  Me  to  slave  with 
thy  stns,  thou  hast  wearied  Me  with  thine  iniquities 
(xHii.  22-24).  So  God  sets  their  sins,  where  men  most 
see  the  blackness  of  their  guilt,  in  the  face  of  His  love. 
And  now  He  challenges  conscience.  Put  Me  in  remem- 
brance; let  us  come  to  judgement  together;  indict,  that 
thou  mayest  be  justified  {ver.  26).  But  it  had  been  agelong 
and  original  sin.  Thy  father,  the  first  had  sinned;  yea, 
thy  representative  men — literally  interpreters,  mediators — 
had  transgressed  against  Me.  Therefore  did  I  profane 
consecrated  princes,  and  gave  Jacob  to  the  ban,  and 
Israel  to  reviling  (w.  27,  28).  The  Exile  itself  was  but 
an  episode  in  a  tragedy,  which  began  far  back  with 
Israel's  history.  And  so  ch.  xlviii.  repeats:  I  knew  that 
thou  dost  deal  very  treacherously,  and  Transgressor- 
from-the-womb  do  they  call  thee  (ver.  8).  And  then  there 
comes  the  sad  note  of  what  might  have  been.  O  that 
thou  hadst  hearkened  to  My  commandments  !  then  had  thy 
peace  been  as  the  river,  and  thy  righteousness  as  the  waves 
of  the  sea  (ver.  1 8).  As  broad  Euphrates  thou  shouldst 
have  lavishly  rolled,  and  flashed  to  the  sun  hke  a 
summer  sea.  But  now,  hear  what  is  left.  There  is  no 
peace,  saith  Jehovah,  to  the  ivicked  (ver.  22). 

Ah,  it  is  no  dusty  stretch  of  ancient  history,  no  long- 
extinct  volcano  upon  the  far  waste  of  Asian  politics,  to 
which  we  are  led  by  the  writings  of  the  Exile.  But 
they  treat  of  man's  perennial  trouble ;  and  conscience, 


xliii.-xlviii.]    FOUR  POINTS  OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.      157 

that  never  dies,  speaks  through  their  old-fashioned 
letters  and  figures  with  words  we  feel  like  swords.  And 
therefore,  still,  whether  they  be  psalms  or  prophecies, 
they  stand  like  some  ancient  minster  in  the  modern 
world, — where,  on  each  new  soiled  day,  till  time  ends, 
the  heavy  heart  of  man  may  be  helped  to  read  itself, 
and  lift  up  its  guilt  for  mercy. 

They  are  the  confessional  of  the  world,  but  they 
are  also  its  gospel,  and  the  altar  where  forgiveness  is 
sealed.  /,  even  /,  am  He  that  blotteth  out  thy  transgres- 
sions/or Mine  own  sake,  and  will  not  remember  thy  sins. 
O  Israel  J  thou  shalt  not  be  forgotten  of  Me.  I  have  blotted 
out  as  a  thick  cloud  thy  transgressions ^  and  as  a  cloud  thy 
sins ;  turn  unto  Me,  for  I  have  redeemed  thee.  Israel 
shall  be  saved  by  Jehovah  with  an  everlasting  salvation; 
ye  shall  not  be  ashamed  nor  confounded  world  without 
end*  Now,  when  we  remember  who  the  God  is,  who 
thus  speaks, — not  merely  One  who  flings  the  word  of 
pardon  from  the  sublime  height  of  His  holiness,  but,  as 
we  saw,  speaks  it  from  the  midst  of  all  His  own  passion 
and  struggle  under  His  people's  sins, — then  with  what 
assurance  does  His  word  come  home  to  the  heart.  What 
honour  and  obligation  to  righteousness  does  the  pardon 
of  such  a  God  put  upon  our  hearts.  One  understands 
why  Ambrose  sent  Augustine,  after  his  conversion,  first 
to  these  prophecies. 

4.  The  fourth  token,  which  these  chapters  offer  for 
the  religion  of  Jehovah,  is  the  claim  they  make  for  it  to 
interpret  and  to  control  history.  There  are  two  verbs, 
which  are  frequently  repeated  throughout  the  chapters, 
and  which  are  given  together  in  ch.  xliii.  12  :  I  have  pub- 
lished and  I  have  saved.     These  are  the  two  acts  by 

*  Chs.  xliii.  25  ;  xliv.  21,  22  ;  xlv.  17. 


158  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAlAti. 

which  Jehovah  proves  His  soHtary  divinity  over  against 
the  idols. 

The  publishing,  of  course,  is  the  same  prediction,  of 
which  ch.  xH.  spoke.  It  is  publishing  in  former  times 
things  happening  now ;  it  is  publishing  now  things  that 
are  still  to  happen.  And  who,  like  Me,  calls  out  and 
publishes  it,  and  sets  it  in  order  for  Me,  since  I  appointed 
the  ancient  people  ?  and  the  things  that  are  coming,  and 
that  shall  come,  let  them  publish.  '  Tremble  not,  nor  fear  : 
did  I  not  long  ago  cause  thee  to  hear'^  and  I  published,  and 
ye  are  My  witnesses.  Is  there  a  God  beside  Me'l  nay, 
there  is  no  Rock;  I  know  none  (xliv.  J,  8). 

The  two  go  together,  the  doing  of  wonderful  and 
saving  acts  for  His  people  and  the  publishing  of  them 
before  they  come  to  pass.  Israel's  past  is  full  of  such  acts. 
Ch.  xliii.  instances  the  delivery  from  Egypt  (vv.  i6,  17), 
but  immediately  proceeds  (vv.  18,  19)  :  Remember  ye  not 
the  former  things — here  our  old  friend  ri'shonoth  occurs 
again,  but  this  time  means  simply  previous  events — 
neither  consider  the  things  of  old.  Behold,  I  am  doing  a 
new  thing;  even  now  it  springs  forth.  Shall  ye  not 
know  it  f  Yea,  I  will  set  in  the  wildet-ness  a  way,  in  the 
desert  rivers.  And  of  this  new  event  of  the  Return, 
and  of  others  which  will  follow  from  it,  hke  the  building 
of  Jerusalem,  the  chapters  insist  over  and  over  again, 
that  they  are  the  work  of  Jehovah,  who  is  therefore  a 
Saviour  God.  But  what  better  proof  can  be  given,  that 
these  saving  facts  are  indeed  His  own  and  part  of  His 
counsel,  than  that  He  foretold  them  by  His  messengers 
and  prophets  to  Israel, — of  which  previous  publication 
His  people  are  the  witnesses.  Who  among  the  peoples 
can  publish  thus,  and  let  us  hear  predictions  ?—  again 
ri'shonoth,  things  ahead— let  them  bring  their  witnesses, 
that  they  may  be  justified,  and  lei  them,  hear  and  say. 


xliii.-xlviii.]    FOUR  POINTS  OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.      159 

Truth.  Ye  are  my  witnesses ^  saith  Jehovah,  to  Israel 
(xliii.  9,  10).  /  have  published,  and  I  have  saved,  and  I 
have  shewed,  and  there  was  no  strange  god  among  you; 
therefore — because  Jehovah  was  notoriously  the  only 
God  who  had  to  do  with  them  during  all  this  prediction 
and  fulfilment  of  prediction — ye  are  witnesses  for  Me, 
saith  Jehovah,  that  I  am  God  (id.  ver.  12).  The  meaning 
of  all  this  is  plain.  Jehovah  is  God  alone,  because  He 
is  directly  effective  in  history  for  the  salvation  of  His 
people,  and  because  He  has  published  beforehand  what 
He  will  do.  The  great  instance  of  this,  which  the 
prophecy  adduces,  is  the  present  movement  towards 
the  liberation  of  the  people,  of  which  movement  Cyrus 
is  the  most  conspicuous  factor.  Of  this  xlv.  19  ff.  says  : 
Not  in  secret  have  I  spoken,  in  a  place  of  the  land  oj 
darkness.  I  have  not  said  to  the  seed  of  Jacob,  In  vanity 
seek  ye  Me.  I  Jehovah  am  a  speaker  of  righteousness,* 
a  publisher  of  things  that  are  straight.  Be  gathered  and 
come  in  ;  draw  together,  ye  survivors  of  the  nations :  they 
have  no  knowledge  that  carry  about  the  log  of  their  image, 
and  are  suppliants  to  a  god  that  cannot  save.  Publish, 
and  bring  it  here;  nay,  let  them  advise  together ;  who 
made  this  to  be  heard, — that  is,  who  published  this, — of 
ancient  time?  Who  published  this  of  old '^  I  Jehovah, 
and  there  is  none  God  beside  Me :  a  God  righteous, — 
that  is,  consistent,  true  to  His  published  word, — and  a 
Saviour,  there  is  none  beside  Me.  Here  we  have  joined 
together  the  same  ideas  as  in  xliii.  12.  There  /  have 
declared  and  saved  is  equivalent  to  a  God  righteous  and  a 
Saviour  here.  Only  in  Jehovah  are  righteousnesses,  that 
is,  fidehty  to  His  anciently  published  purposes;  and 
strength,  that  is,  capacity  to  carry  these  purposes  out 

*  See  ch.  xiv.  of  this  volume. 


i6o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

in  history.  God  is  righteous  because,  according  to 
another  verse  in  the  same  prophecy  (xUv.  26),  He 
confirmeth  the  word  of  His  servant,  and  the  advice  of 
His  messengers  He  fulfilleth. 

Now  the  question  has  been  asked,  To  what  predic- 
tions does  the  prophecy  allude  as  being  fulfilled  in  those 
days  when  Cyrus  was  so  evidently  advancing  to  the 
overthrow  of  Babylon  ?  Before  answering  this  question 
it  is  well  to  note,  that,  for  the  most  part,  the  prophet 
speaks  in  general  terms.  He  gives  no  hint  to  justify 
that  unfounded  belief,  to  which  so  many  think  it 
necessary  to  cling,  that  Cyrus  was  actually  named  by 
a  prophet  of  Jehovah  years  before  he  appeared.  Had 
such  a  prediction  existed,  we  can  have  no  doubt  that 
our  prophet  would  now  have  appealed  to  it.  No :  he 
evidently  refers  only  to  those  numerous  and  notorious 
predictions  by  Isaiah,  and  by  Jeremiah,  of  the  return  of 
Israel  from  exile  after  a  certain  and  fixed  period.  Those 
were  now  coming  to  pass. 

But  from  this  new  day  Jehovah  also  predicts  for  the 
days  to  come,  and  He  does  this  very  particularly,  xliv.  26, 
Who  is  saying  of  Jerusalem,  She  shall  be  inhabited;  and 
of  the  cities  of  Judah,  They  shall  be  built ;  and  of  her  waste 
places,  I  will  raise  them  up.  Who  saith  to  the  deep.  Be  dry, 
and  thy  rivers  I  will  dry  up.  Who  saith  of  Koresh,  My 
Shepherd,  and  all  My  pleasure  he  shall  fulfil :  even  saying 
of  Jerusalem,  She  shall  be  built,  and  the  Temple  shall  be 
founded. 

Thus,  backward  and  forward,  yesterday,  to-day  and 
for  ever,  Jehovah's  hand  is  upon  history.  He  controls 
it :  it  is  the  fulfilment  of  His  ancient  purpose.  By 
predictions  made  long  ago  and  fulfilled  to-day,  by  the 
readiness  to  predict  to-day  what  will  happen  to-morrow. 
He  is  surely  God  and  God  alone.     Singular  fact,  that 


xliii-xlviii.]    FOUR  POINTS   OF  A    TRUE  RELIGION.        i6i 

in  that  day  of  great  empires,  confident  in  their  re- 
sources, and  with  the  future  so  near  their  grasp,  it 
should  be  the  God  of  a  little  people,  cut  off  from  their 
history,  servile  and  seemingly  spent,  who  should  take 
the  big  things  of  earth — Egypt,  Ethiopia,  Seba — and 
speak  of  them  as  counters  to  be  given  in  exchange  for 
His  people ;  who  should  speak  of  such  a  people  as  the 
chief  heirs  of  the  future,  the  indispensable  ministers  of 
mankind.  The  claim  has  two  Divine  features.  It  is 
unique,  and  history  has  vindicated  it.  It  is  unique  :  no 
other  religion,  in  that  or  in  any  other  time,  has  so  ration- 
ally explained  past  history  or  laid  out  the  ages  to  come 
upon  the  lines  of  a  purpose  so  definite,  so  rational,  so 
beneficent — a  purpose  so  worthy  of  the  One  God  and 
Creator  of  all.  And  it  has  been  vindicated:  Israel 
returned  to  their  own  land,  resumed  the  development 
of  their  calling,  and,  after  the  centuries  came  and  went, 
fulfilled  the  promise  that  they  should  be  the  reHgious 
teachers  of  mankind.  The  long  delay  of  this  fulfilment 
surely  but  testifies  the  more  to  the  Divine  foresight  of 
the  promise ;  to  the  patience,  which  nature,  as  well  as 
history,  reveals  to  be,  as  much  as  omnipotence,  a  mark 
of  Deity. 

These,  then,  are  the  four  points,  upon  which  the 
religion  of  Israel  offers  itself.  First,  it  is  the  force  of 
the  character  and  grace  of  a  personal  God  ;  second,  it 
speaks  with  a  high  intellectual  confidence,  whereof  its 
scorn  is  here  the  chief  mark  ;  third,  it  is  intensely  moral, 
making  man's  sin  its  chief  concern;  and  fourth,  it 
claims  the  control  of  history,  and  history  has  justified 
the  claim. 


VOL.   II.  II 


CHAPTER  X. 

CYRUS. 
Isaiah  xli.  2,  25;  xliv.  28-xlv.  13  ;  xlvi.  11 ;  xlviii.  14,  15. 

/"^YRUS,  the   Persian,  is  the  only  man  outside  the 
V_^     covenant  and   people  of  Israel,  who  is  yet  en- 
titled the  Lord's  Shepherd,  and  the  Lord's   Messiah 
or  Christ.     He  is,  besides,  the  only  great  personality, 
of  whom  both  the  Bible  and  Greek  literature   treat  at 
length   and  with  sympathy.      Did   we   know  nothing 
more  of  him  than  this,  the  heathen  who  received   the 
most  sacred  titles  of  Revelation,  the  one  man  in  history 
who  was  the  cynosure  of  both  Greece  and  Judah,  could 
not  fail  to  be  of  the  greatest  interest  to  us.     But  apart 
from    the   way,  in    which   he    impressed    the    Greek 
imagination    and     was     interpreted     by   the     Hebrew 
conscience,  we  have  an  amount  of  historical  evidence 
about     Cyrus,    which,    if   it    dissipates    the    beautiful 
legends  told  of  his  origin  and  his  end,  confirms  most 
of  what  is  written  of  his  character  by  Herodotus  and 
Xenophon,  and  all  of  what  is  described  as  his  career 
by  the  prophet  whom   we  are  studying.    Whether  of 
his  own  virtue,  or  as  being  the  leader  of  a  new  race 
of  men  at  the  fortunate  moment  of  their  call,   Cyrus 
lifted    himself,  from    the   lowest   of   royal   stations,  to 
a  conquest   and   an  empire  achieved   by  only  two'  or 
three  others  in   the  history  of  the  world.     Originally 


xli.,  xliv.-xlviii.]  CYRUS.  163 

but  the  prince  of  Anshan,  or  Anzan,* — a  territory 
of  uncertain  size  at  the  head  of  the  Persian  Gulf, — 
he  brought  under  his  sway,  by  policy  or  war,  the 
large  and  vigorous  nations  of  the  Medes  and  Persians ; 
he  overthrew  the  Lydian  kingdom,  and  subjugated 
Asia  Minor ;  he  so  impressed  the  beginnings  of  Greek 
life,  that,  with  all  their  own  great  men,  the  Greeks 
never  ceased  to  regard  this  Persian  as  the  ideal  king ; 
he  captured  Babylon,  the  throne  of  the  ancient  East, 
and  thus  effected  the  transfer  of  empire  from  the 
Semitic  to  the  Aryan  stock.  He  also  satisfied  the 
peoples,  whom  he  had  beaten,  with  his  rule,  and 
organised  his  realms  with  a  thoroughness  unequalled 
over  so  vast  an  extent  till  the  rise  of  the  Roman 
Empire. 

We  have  scarcely  any  contemporary  or  nearly 
contemporary  evidence  about  his  personality.  But  his 
achievements  testify  to  extraordinary  genius,  and  his 
character  was  the  admiration  of  all  antiquity.  To 
Greek  literature  Cyrus  was  the  Prince  pre-eminent, — 
set  forth  as  the  model  for  education  in  childhood,  self- 
restraint  in  youth,  just  and  powerful  government  in 
manhood.  Most  of  what  we  read  of  him  in  Xenophon's 
Cyropcedia  is,  of  course,  romance  ;  but  the  very  fact, 
that,  like  our  own  King  Arthur,  Cyrus  was  used  as 
a  mirror  to  flash  great  ideals  down  the  ages,  proves 
that  there  was  with  him  native  brilliance  and  width  of 
surface  as  well  as  fortunate  eminence  of  position.  He 
owed  much  to  the  virtue  of  his  race.  Rotten  as  the 
later  Persians  have  become,  the  nation  in  those  days 
impressed  its  enemies  with  its  truthfulness,  purity  and 

*  Identified  by  Delitzsch  as  East,  Halevy  as  West,  and  Winckler 
as  North,  Elam.  Cyrus,  though  reigning  here,  was  a  pure  Persian, 
an  Akhaemenid  or  son  of  the  royal  house  of  Persia. 


i64  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

vigour.  But  the  man,  who  not  only  led  such  a  nation, 
and  was  their  darling,  but  combined  under  his  sceptre, 
in  equal  discipline  and  contentment,  so  many  other 
and  diverse  peoples,  so  many  powerful  and  ambitious 
rulers,  cannot  have  been  merely  the  best  specimen  of 
his  own  nation's  virtue,  but  must  have  added  to  this, 
at  least  much  of  the  original  qualities — humanity, 
breadth  of  mind,  sweetness,  patience  and  genius  for 
managing  men — which  his  sympathetic  biographer 
imputes  to  him  in  so  heroic  a  degree.  It  is  evident 
that  the  Cyropcedia  is  ignorant  of  many  facts  about 
Cyrus,  and  must  have  taken  conscious  liberties  with 
many  more,  but  nobody — who,  on  the  one  hand,  is 
aware  of  what  Cyrus  effected  upon  the  world,  and 
who,  on  the  other,  can  appreciate  that  it  was  possible 
for  a  foreigner  (who,  nevertheless,  had  travelled  through 
most  of  the  scenes  of  Cyrus'  career)  to  form  this  rich 
conception  of  him  more  than  a  century  after  his  death 
— can  doubt  that  the  Persian's  character  (due  allow- 
ance being  made  for  hero-worship)  must  have  been  in 
the  main  as  Xenophon  describes  it. 

Yet  it  is  very  remarkable,  that  our  Scripture  states 
not  one  moral  or  religious  virtue  as  the  qualification  of 
this  Gentile  to  the  title  of  JehovaKs  Messiah.  We 
search  here  in  vain  for  any  gleam  of  appreciation  of 
that  character,  which  drew  the  admiring  eyes  of 
Greece,  In  the  whole  range  of  our  prophecy  there  is 
not  a  single  adjective,  expressing  a  moral  virtue,  applied 
to  Cyrus.  The  righteousness,  which  so  many  passages 
associate  with  his  name,  is  attributed,  not  to  him,  but 
to  God's  calling  of  him,  and  does  not  imply  justice  or 
any  similar  quality,  but  is,  as  we  shall  afterwards  see 
when  we  examine  the  remarkable  use  of  this  word  in 
Second  Isaiah,  a  mixture  of  good  faith  and  thoroughness. 


xli.,  xliv.-xlviii.]  CYRUS.  165 

— all-rightness.*  The  one  passage  of  our  prophet,  in 
which  it  has  been  supposed  by  some  that  Jehovah 
makes  a  religious  claim  to  Cyrus,  as  if  the  Persian 
were  a  monotheist — he  calleth  on  My  name — is,  as  we 
have  seen,t  too  uncertain,  both  in  text  and  rendering, 
to  have  anything  built  upon  it.  Indeed,  no  Hebrew 
could  have  justly  praised  this  Persian's  faith,  who  called 
himself  the  "  servant  of  Merodach,"  and  in  his  public 
proclamations  to  Babylonia  ascribed  to  the  Babylonian 
gods  his  power  to  enter  their  city.J  Cyrus  was  very 
probably  the  pious  ruler,  described  by  Xenophon,  but 

*  The  parallel  which  Professor  Sayce  {Fresh  Light  from  the  Ancient 
Monuments,  p.  147)  draws  between  the  statement  of  the  Cyrus- 
cylinder,  that  Cyrus  "  governed  in  justice  and  righteousness,  and  was 
righteous  in  hand  and  heart,"  and  Isa.  xlv.  13,  "Jehovah  raised  him 
up  in  righteousness,"  is  therefore  utterly. unreal.  It  is  very  difficult 
to  see  how  the  Deputy-Professor  of  Comparative  Philology  at  Oxford 
could  have  been  reminded  of  the  one  passage  by  the  other,  for  in 
Isa.  xlv.  13  righteousness  neither  is  used  of  Cyrus,  nor  signifies 
the  moral  virtue  which  it  does  on  the  cylinder. 

f  See  note  to  ch,  vii. 

X  The  following  are  extracts  from  the  Cylinder  of  Cyrus  (see 
Sayce's  Fresh  Light  from  the  Ancient  Monuments,  pp.  138-140)  : — 
"Cyrus,  king  of  Elam,  he  (Merodach)  proclaimed  by  name  for  the 
sovereignty.  .  .  .  Whom  he  had  conquered  with  his  hand,  he 
governed  in  justice  and  righteousness.  Merodach,  the  great  lord,  the 
restorer  of  his  people,  beheld  with  joy  the  deeds  of  his  vicegerent, 
who  was  righteous  in  hand  and  heart.  To  Babylon  he  summoned  his 
march,  and  he  bade  him  take  the  road  to  Babylon ;  like  a  friend  and 
a  comrade  he  went  at  his  side.  Without  fighting  or  battle  he  caused 
him  to  enter  into  Babylon,  his  city  of  Babylon  feared.  The  god  .  .  . 
has  in  goodness  drawn  nigh  to  him,  has  made  strong  his  name.  I 
Cyrus  ...  I  entered  Babylon  in  peace.  .  .  .  Merodach  the  great 
lord  (cheered)  the  heart  of  his  servant.  .  .  .  My  vast  armies  he 
marshalled  peacefully  in  the  midst  of  Babylon  ;  throughout  Sumer 
and  Accad  I  had  no  revilers.  .  .  .  Accad,  Marad,  etc.,  I  restored  the 
gods  who  dwelt  within  them  to  their  places  ...  all  their  peoples  I 
assembled  and  I  restored  their  lands.  And  the  gods  of  Sumer  and 
Accad  whom  Nabonidos,  to  the  anger  of  the  lord  of  god^  (Merodach^, 


i66  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

he  was  no  monotheist.  And  our  prophet  denies  all 
religious  sympathy  between  him  and  Jehovah,  in  words 
too  strong  to  be  misunderstood  :  /  woo  thee,  though  thou 
hast  not  known  Me.  .  .  .  /  gird  thee,  though  thou  hast 
not  known  Me  (ch.  xlv.  4,  5)* 

On  what,  then,  is  the  Divine  election  of  Cyrus 
grounded  by  our  prophet,  if  not  upon  his  character 
and  his  faith  ?  Simply  and  barely  upon  God's 
sovereignty  and  will.  That  is  the  impressive  lesson 
of  the  passage  :  /  am  Jehovah,  Maker  of  everything ;  that 
stretch  foiih  the  heavens  alone,  and  spread  the  earth  by 
Myselj  .  .  .  that  say .  of  Koresh,  My  shepherd,  and  all 
My  pleasure  he  shall  accomplish  (xliv.  24,  28).  Cyrus  is 
Jehovah's,  because  all  things  are  Jehovah's  ;  of  what- 
soever character  or  faith  they  be,  they  are  His  and  for 
His  uses.  /  am  Jehovah,  and  there  is  none  else :  Former 
of  light  and  Creator  of  darkness,  Maker  of  peace  and 
Creator  of  evil;  I,  Jehovah,  Maker  of  all  these.  God's 
sovereignty  could  not  be  more  broadly  stated.  All 
things,  irrespective  of  their  character,  are  from  Him 
and  for  His  ends.  But  what  end  is  dearer  to  the 
Almighty,  what  has  He  more  plainly  declared,  than 
that  His  people  *  shall  be  settled  again  in  their  own 
land  ?  For  this  He  will  use  the  fittest  force.  The 
return  of  Israel  to  Palestine  is  a  political  event, 
requiring   political  power ;  and    the  greatest  political 

had  brought  into  Babylon,  I  settled  in  peace  in  their  sanctuaries  by 
command  of  Merodach,  the  great  lord.  In  the  goodness  of  their 
hearts  may  all  the  gods  whom  I  have  brought  into  their  strong 
places  daily  intercede  before  Bel  and  Nebo,  that  they  should  grant 
me  length  of  'days  ;  may  they  bless  my  projects  with  prosperity, 
and  may  they  say  to  Merodach  my  lord,  that  Cyrus  the  king,  thy 
worshipper,  and  Kambyses  his  son  (deserve  his  favour)." 

*  Why  so  sovereign  a  God  should  be  in  such  peculiar  relations  with 
one  people,  we  will  try  to  see  in  ch.  xv.  of  this  volume. 


xH.,  xliv.-xlviii.]  CYRUS.  167 

power  of  the  day  is  Cyrus.  Therefore,  by  His  prophet, 
the  Almighty  declares  Cyrus  to  be  His  people's  deliverer, 
His  own  anointed.  Thus  saith  Jehovah  to  His  Messiah,  to 
Koresh:  .  .  .  That  thou  may  est  know  that  I  am  Jehovah  y 
Caller  oj  thee  by  thy  name,  God  of  Israel^  for  the  sake 
of  My  servant  Jacob  and  Israel  My  chosen.  And  I  have 
called  thee  by  thy  name.  I  have  wooed  thee,  though  thou 
hast  not  known  Me  (xlv.  I,  3,  4). 

Now  to  this  designation  of  Cyrus,  as  the  Messiah, 
great  objections  rose  from  Israel.  We  can  under- 
stand them.  People,  who  have  fallen  from  a  glorious 
past,  cling  passionately  to  its  precedents.  All  the 
ancient  promises  of  a  deliverer  for  Israel  represented 
him  as  springing  from  the  house  of  David.  The  de- 
liverance, too,  was  to  have  come  by  miracle,  or  by  the 
impression  of  the  people's  own  holiness  upon  their 
oppressors.  The  Lord  Himself  was  to  have  made  bare 
His  arm  and  Israel  to  go  forth  in  the  pride  of  His  favour, 
as  in  the  days  of  Egypt  and  the  Red  Sea.  But  this 
deliverer,  who  was  announced,  was  alien  to  the  common- 
wealth of  Israel;  and  not  by  some  miracle  was  the 
people's  exodus  promised,  but  as  the  effect  of  his 
imperial  word — a  minor  incident  in  his  policy  I  The 
precedents  and  the  pride  of  Israel  called  out  against 
such  a  scheme  of  salvation,  and  the  murmurs  of  the 
people  rose  against  the  word  of  God. 

Sternly  replies  the  Almighty :  Woe  to  him  that 
striveth  with  his  Moulder,  a  potsherd  among  the  potsherds 
of  the  ground!  Saith  clay  to  its  moulder j  What 
doest  thou  ?  or  thy  work  of  thee.  No  hands  hath  he  ? 
Woe  to  him  that  saith  to  a  father,  What  begettest  thou  ? 
or  to  a  woman.  With  what  travailest  thou  ?  Thus  saith 
Jehovah,  Holy  of  Israel  and  his  Moulder:  The  things 
that  are  coming  ask  of  Me;  concerning  My  sonSf  and 


1 68  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

concerning  the  work  of  My  hands,  command  ye  Me  !  I 
have  made  Earth*  and  created  man  upon  her:  /,  My 
hands,  have  stretched  Heaven,  and  all  its  host  have  I 
ordered.  In  that  universal  providence,  this  Cyrus  is  but 
an  incident.  I  have  stirred  him  up  in  righteousness,  and  all 
his  ways  shall  I  make  level.  He — emphatic — shall  build 
My  City,  and  My  Captivity  he  shall  send  off^not  for  price 
and  not  for  reward,  saith  Jehovah  of  Hosts  (xlv.  9-13). 

To  this  bare  fiat,  the  passages  referring  to  Cyrus  in 
ch.  xlvi.  and  ch.  xlviii.  add  scarcely  anything.  /  am 
God,  and  there  is  none  like  Me.  .  .  .  Who  say,  My  counsel 
shall  stand,  and  all  My  pleasure  will  I  perform.  Who 
call  from  the  sunrise  a  Bird-of-prey,  from  a  land  far-off 
the  Man  of  My  counsel.  Yea,  I  have  spoken,  yea,  I  will 
bring  it  to  pass.  I  have  formed,  yea,  will  do  it  (xlvi.  9, 
10,  11).  Bird-of-prey  here  has  been  thought  to  have 
reference  to  the  eagle,  which  was  the  standard  of  Cyrus. 
But  it  reters  to  Cyrus  himself.  What  God  sees  in  this 
man  to  fulfil  His  purpose  is  swift,  resistless  force.  Not 
his  character,  but  his  swoop  is  useful  for  the  Almighty's 
end.  Again:  Be  gathered,  all  of  you,  and  hearken;  who 
among  them  hath  published  these  things  ?  Jehovah  hath 
loved  him  :  he  will  do  His  pleasure  on  Babel.,  and  his  arm 
shall  be  on  the  Chaldeans.  I,  I  have  spoken;  yea,  I  have 
called  him  :  I  have  brought  him,  and  will  cause  his  way  to 
prosper,  or,  /  will  pioneer  his  way  (xlviii.  14,  15).  This 
verb  to  cause  to  prosper  is  one  often  used  by  our  prophet, 
but  nowhere  more  appropriately  to  its  original  meaning, 
than  here,  where  it  is  used  of  a  way.  The  word  signifies 
to  cut  through ;  then  to  ford  a  river — there  is  no  word  for 
bridge  in  Hebrew;  then  to  go  on  well,  prosper.] 

*  Earth  here  without  the  article,  but  plainly  the  earth,  and  not  the 
land  of  Judah. 

f  Cf.  with  this  Hebrew  word  PI/'V  the  Greek  irpoKOTTTeiv,  to  beat  or 


xli.,  xliv.-xlviii.]  CYRUS.  169 

In  all  these  passages,  then,  there  is  no  word  about 
character.  Cyrus  is  neither  chosen  for  his  character  nor 
said  to  be  endowed  with  one.  But  that  he  is  there,  and 
that  he  does  so  much,  is  due  simply  to  this,  that  God 
has  chosen  him.  And  what  he  is  endowed  with  is  force, 
push,  swiftness,  irresistibleness.  He  is,  in  short,  not  a 
character,  but  a  tool ;  and  God  makes  no  apology  for 
using  him  but  thjs,  that  he  has  the  qualities  of  a  tool. 

Now  we  cannot  help  being  struck  with  the  contrast 
of  all  this,  the  Hebrew  view  of  Cyrus,  with  the  well- 
known  Greek  views  of  him.  To  the  Greeks  he  is  first 
and  foremost  a  character.  Xenophon,  and  Herodotus 
almost  as  much  as  Xenophon,  are  less  concerned  with 
what  Cyrus  did  than  with  what  he  was.  He  is  the 
King,  the  ideal  ruler.  It  is  his  simplicity,  his  purity, 
his  health,  his  wisdom,  his  generosity,  his  moral 
influence  upon  men,  that  attract  the  Greeks,  and  they 
conceive  that  he  cannot  be  too  brightly  painted  in  his 
virtues,  if  so  he  may  serve  for  an  example  to  following 
generations.  But  bring  Cyrus  out  of  the  light  of  the 
eyes  of  this  hero-worshipping  people,  that  light  that 
has  so  gilded  his  native  virtues,  into  the  shadow  of  the 
austere  Hebrew  faith,  and  the  brilliance  is  quenched. 
He  still  moves  forcibly,  but  his  character  is  neutral. 
Scripture  emphasizes  only  his  strength,  his  serviceable- 
ness,  his  success  :  Whose  right  hand  I  have  holdeUy  to 
subdue  nations  before  him,  and  I  will  loosen  the  loins  of 
kings;  to  open  doors  before  him,  and  gates  shall  not  be  shut. 
I  will  go  before  thee,  and  make  the  rugged  places  plain. 
I  will  shiver  doors  of  brass,  and  bars  of  iron  will  I 
sunder  (x\v.  i,  2).  That  Cyrus  is  doing  a  work  in  God's 
hand  and  for  God's  end,  and  therefore  forcibly,  and  sure 

cut  a  way  through  like  pioneers ;  then  to  forward  a  work,  advance, 
prosper  (Luke  ii.  52  ;  Gal,  i.  14 ;  2  Tim.  ij^-ftJ^t'      f  r>"r"^"^^ 


170  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

of  success — that  is  all  the  interest  Scripture  takes  in 
Cyrus. 

Observe  the  difference.  It  is  characteristic  of  the 
two  nations.  The  Greek  views  Cyrus  as  an  exam- 
ple; therefore  cannot  too  abundantly  multiply  his 
morality.  The  Hebrew  views  him  as  a  tool ;  but  with 
a  tool  you  are  not  anxious  about  its  moral  character, 
you  only  desire  to  be  convinced  of  its  force  and  its 
fitness.  The  Greek  mind  is  careful  to  unfold  the 
noble  humanity  of  the  man, — a  humanity  universally 
and  eternally  noble.  By  the  side  of  that  imperishable 
picture  of  him,  how  meagre  to  Greek  eyes  would  have 
seemed  the  temporary  occasion,  for  which  the  Hebrew 
claimed  that  Cyrus  had  been  raised  up — to  lead  the 
petty  Jewish  tribe  back  to  their  own  obscure  corner  of 
the  earth.  Herodotus  and  Xenophon,  had  you  told 
them  that  this  was  the  chief  commission  of  Cyrus  from 
God,  to  restore  the  Jews  to  Palestine,  would  have 
laughed.  ^'  Identify  him,  forsooth,  with  those  pro- 
vincial interests  ! "  they  would  have  said.  ^'  He  was 
meant,  we  lift  him  up,  for  mankind  ! " 

What  judgement  are  we  to  pass  on  these  two  charac- 
teristic pictures  of  Cyrus  ?  What  lessons  are  we  to 
draw  from  their  contrast  ? 

They  do  not  contradict,  but  in  many  particulars 
they  corroborate  one  another.  Cyrus  would  not  have 
been  the  efficient  weapon  in  the  Almighty's  hand, 
which  our  prophet  panegyrises,  but  for  that  thought- 
fulness  in  preparation  and  swift  readiness  to  seize  the 
occasion,  which  Xenophon  extols.  And  nothing  is  more 
striking  to  one  familiar  with  our  Scriptures,  when  read- 
ing the  Cyropcedia,  than  the  frequency  with  which  the 
writer  insists  on  the  success  that  followed  the  Persian. 
If  to  the  Hebrew  Cyrus  was  the  called  of  God,  upheld 


xli.,  xliv.-xlviii.]  CYRUS.  171 

in  righteousness,  to  the  Greek  he  was  equally  con- 
spicuous as  the  favourite  of  fortune.  "  I  have  always," 
Xenophon  makes  the  dying  king  say,  '^  seemed  to  feel 
my  strength  increase  with  the  advance  of  time,  so  that 
I  have  not  found  myself  weaker  in  my  old  age  than  in 
my  youth,  nor  do  I  know  that  I  have  attempted  or 
desired  anything  in  which  I  have  not  been  successful."* 
And  this  was  said  piously,  for  Xenophon's  Cyrus  was  a 
devout  servant  of  the  gods. 

The  two  views,  then,  are  not  hostile,  nor  are  we 
compelled  to  choose  between  them.  Still,  they  make 
a  very  suggestive  contrast,  if  we  put  these  two  ques- 
tions about  them  :  Which  is  the  more  true  to  historical 
fact  ?  Which  is  the  more  inspiring  example  ? 

Which  is  the  more  true  to  historical  fact  ?  There 
is  no  difficulty  in  answering  this :  undoubtedly,  the 
Hebrew.  It  has  been  of  far  more  importance  to  the 
world  that  Cyrus  freed  the  Jews  than  that  he  inspired 
the  Cyropcedia.  That  single  enactment  of  his,  perhaps 
only  one  of  a  hundred  consequences  of  his  capture  of 
Babylon,  has  had  infinitely  greater  results  than  his 
character,  or  than  its  magnificent  exaggeration  by 
Greek  hero-worship.  No  one  who  has  read  the  Cyro- 
pcedia— out  of  his  school-days — would  desire  to  place 
it  in  any  contrast,  in  which  its  peculiar  charm  would  be 
shadowed,  or  its  own  modest  and  strictly-limited  claims 
would  not  receive  justice.  The  charm,  the  truth  of  the 
Cyropcedia,  are  eternal ;  but  the  significance  they  borrow 
from  Cyrus — though  they  are  as  much  due,  perhaps,  to 
Xenophon's  own  pure  soul  as  to  Cyrus — is  not  to  be 
compared  for  one  instant  to  the  significance  of  that 
single  deed  of  his,  into  which  the  Bible  absorbs  the 

*  Cyropcedia,  Book  VIII.,  ch.  vii.,  6. 


172  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

meaning  of  his  whole  career, — the  liberation  of  the 
Jews.  The  Cyropcedia  has  been  the  instruction  and 
delight  of  many, — of  as  many  in  modern  times,  perhaps, 
as  in  ancient.  But  the  Hberation  of  the  Jews  meant 
the  assurance  of  the  world's  religious  education.  Cyrus 
sent  this  people  back  to  their  land  solely  as  a  spiritual 
people.  He  did  not  allow  them  to  set  up  again  the 
house  of  David,  but  by  his  decree  the  Temple  was 
rebuilt.  Israel  entered  upon  their  purely  religious 
career,  set  in  order  their  vast  stores  of  spiritual  ex- 
perience, wrote  their  histories  of  grace  and  providence, 
developed  their  worship,  handed  down  their  law,  and 
kept  themselves  holy  unto  the  Lord.  Till,  in  the  ful- 
ness of  the  times,  from  this  petty  and  exclusive  tribe, 
and  by  the  fire,  which  they  kept  burning  on  the  altar 
that  Cyrus  had  empowered  them  to  raise,  there  was 
kindled  the  glory  of  an  universal  religion.  To  change 
the  figure,  Christianity  sprang  from  Judaism  as  the 
flower  from  the  seed ;  but  it  was  the  hand  of  Cyrus, 
which  planted  the  seed  in  the  only  soil,  in  which  it 
could  have  fructified.  Of  such  an  universal  destiny 
for  the  Faith,  Cyrus  was  not  conscious,  but  the  Jews' 
themselves  were.  Our  prophet  represents  him,  indeed, 
as  acting  for  Jacob  My  servants  sake,  and  IsraeVs  My 
chosen,  but  the  chapter  does  not  close  without  proclama- 
tion to  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  look  unto  Jehovah  and  be 
saved,  and  the  promise  of  a  time  when  every  knee  shall 
bow  and  every  tongue  swear  unto  the  God  of  Israel. 

Now  put  all  these  results,  which  the  Jews,  regardless 
of  the  character  of  Cyrus,  saw  flowing  from  his  policy, 
as  the  servant  of  God  on  their  behalf,  side  by  side  with 
the  influence  which  the  Greeks  borrowed  from  Cyrus, 
and  say  whether  Greek  or  Jew  had  the  more  true  and 
historical    conscience   of   this   great   power, — whether 


xli.,  xliv.-xlviii.]  CYRUS.  173 

Greek  or  Jew  had  his  hand  on  the  pulse  of  the  world's 
main  artery.  Surely  we  see  that  the  main  artery  of 
human  life  runs  down  the  Bible,  that  here  we  have  a 
sense  of  the  control  of  history,  which  is  higher  than 
even  the  highest  hero-worship.  Some  may  say,  ^'  True, 
but  what  a  very  unequal  contest,  into  which  to  thrust 
the  poor  Cyropcedia  I "  Precisely ;  it  is  from  the  in- 
equality of  the  contrast,  that  we  learn  the  uniqueness 
of  Israel's  inspiration.  Let  us  do  all  justice  to  the 
Greek  and  his  appreciation  of  Cyrus.  In  that,  he 
seems  the  perfection  of  humanity  ;  but  with  the  Jew 
we  rise  to  the  Divine,  touching  the  right  hand  of  the 
providence  of  God. 

There  is  a  moral  lesson  for  ourselves  in  these  two 
views  about  Cyrus.  The  Greeks  regard  him  as  a  hero, 
the  Jews  as  an  instrument.  The  Greeks  are  interested 
in  him  that  he  is  so  attractive  a  figure,  so  effective  an 
example  to  rouse  men  and  restrain  them.  But  the 
Jews  stand  in  wonder  of  his  subjection  to  the  will  of 
God  ;  their  Scriptures  extol,  not  his  virtues,  but  his 
predestination  to  certain  Divine  ends. 

Now  let  us  say  no  word  against  hero-worship.  We 
have  need  of  all  the  heroes,  which  the  Greek,  and  every 
other,  literature  can  raise  up  for  us.  We  need  the 
communion  of  the  saints.  To  make  us  humble  in  our 
pride,  to  make  us  hopeful  in  our  despair,  we  need  our 
big  brothers,  the  heroes  of  humanity.  We  need  them 
in  history,  we  need  them  in  fiction ;  we  cannot  do 
without  them  for  shame,  for  courage,  for  fellowship, 
for  truth.  But  let  us  remember  that  still  more  in- 
dispensable— for  strength,  as  well  as  for  peace,  of  mind 
— is  the  other  temper.  Neither  self  nor  the  world  is 
conquered  by  admiration  of  men,  but  only  by  the  fear 
and  obligation  of  God.     I  speak  now  of  applying  this 


174  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

temper  to  ourselves.  We  shall  live  fruitful  and  con- 
sistent lives  only  in  so  far  as  vjq  hear  God  saying  to 
us,  /  gird  thee,  and  give  ourselves  into  His  guidance. 
Admire  heroes  if  thou  wilt,  but  only  admire  them  and 
thou  remainest  a  slave.  Learn  their  secret,  to  commit 
themselves  to  God  and  to  obey  Him,  and  thou  shalt 
become  a  hero  too. 

God's  anointing  of  Cyrus,  the  heathen,  has  yet  another 
lesson  to  teach  us,  which  religious  people  especially  need 
to  learn. 

This  passage  about  Cyrus  lifts  us  to  a  very  absolute 
and  awful  faith.  /  am  Jehovah^  and  none  else :  Former 
oj  light  and  Creator  of  darkness,  Maker  of  peace  and 
Creator  of  mischief  ;  I  Jehovah,  Maker  of  all  these  things. 
The  objection  at  once  rises,  "  Is  it  possible  to  beUeve 
this  ?  Are  we  to  lay  upon  providence  everything  that 
happens  ?  Surely  we  Westerns,  with  our  native  scep- 
ticism and  strong  conscience,  cannot  be  expected  to 
hold  a  faith  so  Oriental  and  fatalistic  as  that." 

But  notice  to  whom  the  passage  is  addressed.  To 
religious  people,  who  professedly  accept  God's  sove- 
reignty, but  wish  to  make  an  exception  in  the  one  case 
against  which  they  have  a  prejudice — that  a  Gentile 
should  be  the  deliverer  of  the  holy  people.  Such 
narrow  and  imperfect  believers  are  reminded  that  they 
must  not  substitute  for  faith  in  God  their  own  ideas  of 
how  God  ought  to  work  ;  that  they  must  not  limit  His 
operations  to  their  own  conception  of  His  past  revela- 
tions ;  that  God  does  not  always  work  even  by  His 
own  precedents  ;  and  that  many  other  forces  than  con- 
ventional and  religious  ones — yea,  even  forces  as  destitute 
of  moral  or  rehgious  character  as  Cyrus  himself  seemed 
to  be— are  also  in  God's  hands,  and  may  be  used  by 
Him  as  means  of  grace.     There  is   frequent    charge 


xli.,  xliv.-xlviii.]  CYRUS.  175 

made  in  our  day  against  what  are  called  the  more 
advanced  schools  of  theology,  of  scepticism  and  irre- 
verence. But  this  passage  reminds  us  that  the  most 
sceptical  and  irreverent  are  those  old-fashioned  be- 
lievers, who,  clinging  to  precedent  and  their  own 
Stereotyped  notions  of  things,  deny  that  God's  hands 
are  in  a  movement,  because  it  is  novel  and  not  ortho- 
dox. Woe  unto  him  that  striveth  with  his  Moulder; 
shall  the  clay  say  to  its  moulder ^  What  makest  thou  ? 
God  did  not  cease  moulding  when  He  gave  us  the 
canon  and  our  creeds,  when  He  founded  the  Church  and 
the  Sacraments.  His  hand  is  still  among  the  clay,  and 
upon  time,  that  great  "potter's  wheel,"  which  still  moves 
obedient  to  His  impulse.  All  the  large  forward  move- 
ments, the  big  things  oi  to-day — commerce,  science, 
criticism — however  neutral,  like  Cyrus,  their  character 
may  be,  are,  like  Cyrus,  grasped  and  anointed  by  God. 
Therefore  let  us  show  reverence  and  courage  before 
the  great  things  of  to-day.  Do  not  let  us  scoff  at  their 
novelty  or  grow  fearful  because  they  show  no  orthodox, 
or  even  no  religious,  character.  God  reigns,  and  He 
will  use  them,  for  what  has  been  the  dearest  purpose  of 
His  heart,  the  emancipation  of  true  religion,  the  con- 
firmation of  the  faithful,  the  victory  of  righteousness. 
When  Cyrus  rose  and  the  prophet  named  him  as 
Israel's  deliverer,  and  the  severely  orthodox  in  Israel 
objected,  did  God  attempt  to  soothe  them  by  pointing 
out  how  admirable  a  character  he  was,  and  how  near 
in  religion  to  the  Jews  themselves  ?  God  did  no  such 
thing,  but  spoke  only  of  the  military  and  political 
fitness  of  this  great  engine,  by  which  He  was  to  batter 
Babylon.  That  Cyrus  was  a  quick  marcher,  a  far 
shooter,  an  inspirer  of  fear,  a  follower  up  of  victory, 
one  who  swooped  like  a  bird-of-prey,  one  whose  weight 


176  THE  BOOK  OF"  ISAIAH. 

of  war  burst  through  every  obstruction, — this  is  what 
the  astonished  pedants  are  told  about  the  Gentile,  to 
whose  Gentileness  they  had  objected.  No  soft  words 
to  calm  their  bristling  orthodoxy,  but  heavy  facts, — an 
appeal  to  their  common-sense,  if  they  had  any,  that 
this  was  the  most  practical  means  for  the  practical  end 
God  had  in  view.  For  again  we  learn  the  old  lesson 
the  prophets  are  ever  so  anxious  to  teach  us,  God  is 
wise.  He  is  concerned,  not  to  be  orthodox  or  true  to 
His  own  precedent,  but  to  be  practical,  and  effective 
for  salvation. 

And  so,  too,  in  our  own  day,  though  we  may  not  see 
any  religious  character  whatsoever  about  certain  suc- 
cessful movements — say  in  science,  for  instance — which 
are  sure  to  affect  the  future  of  the  Church  and  of  Faith, 
do  not  let  us  despair,  neither  deny  that  they,  too,  are 
in  the  counsels  of  God.  Let  us  only  be  sure  that  they 
are  permitted  for  some  end — some  practical  end ;  and 
watch,  with  meekness  but  with  vigilance,  to  see  what 
that  end  shall  be.  Perhaps  the  endowment  of  the 
Church  with  new  weapons  of  truth ;  perhaps  her  eman- 
cipation from  associations  which,  however  ancient,  are 
unhealthy  ;  perhaps  her  opportunity  to  go  forth  upon 
new  heights  of  vision,  new  fields  of  conquest. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

BEARING   OR   BORNE. 
Isaiah  xlvi. 

CHAPTER  XLVI.  is  a  definite  prophecy,  complete 
in  itself.  It  repeats  many  of  the  truths  which 
we  have  found  in  previous  chapters,  and  we  have 
already  seen  what  it  says  about  Cyrus.  But  it  also 
strikes  out  a  new  truth,  very  relevant  then,  when  men 
made  idols  and  worshipped  the  works  of  their  hands, 
and  relevant  still,  when  so  many,  with  equal  stupidity, 
are  more  concerned  about  keeping  up  the  forms  of 
their  religion  than  allowing  God  to  sustain  them- 
selves. 

The  great  contrast,  which  previous  chapters  have  been 
elaborating,  is  the  contrast  between  the  idols  and  the 
living  God.  On  the  one  side  we  have  had  pictures  of 
the  busy  idol-factories,  cast  into  agitation  by  the  advent 
of  Cyrus,  turning  out  with  much  toil  and  noise  their 
tawdry,  unstable  images.  Foolish  men,  instead  of 
letting  God  undertake  for  them,  go  to  and  try  what 
their  own  hands  and  hammers  can  effect.  Over  against 
them,  and  their  cunning  and  toil,  the  prophet  sees  the 
God  of  Israel  rise  alone,  taking  all  responsibility  of 
salvation  to  Himself — /,  /  am  He  :  look  unto  Me,  all  the 
ends  of  the  earth,  and  be  ye  saved.  This  contrast  comes 
to  a  head  in  ch.  xlvi. 

VOL.  II.  12 


178  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

It  is  still  the  eve  of  the  capture  of  Babylon ;  but  the 
prophet  pictures  to  himself  what  will  happen  on  the 
morrow  of  the  capture.  He  sees  the  conqueror  follow- 
ing the  old  fashion  of  triumph — rifling  the  temples  of 
his  enemies  and  carrying  away  the  defeated  and  dis- 
credited gods  as  trophies  to  his  own.  The  haughty 
idols  are  torn  from  their  pedestals  and  brought  head 
foremost  through  the  temple  doors.  Bel  crouches — as 
men  have  crouched  to  Bel ;  Nebo  coivers — a  stronger 
verb  than  crouches,  but  assonant  to  it,  like  cower  to 
crouch*  Their  idols  have  fallen  to  the  beast  and  to  the 
cattle.  Beast,  "  that  is,  tamed  beast,  perhaps  elephants 
in  contrast  to  cattle,  or  domestic  animals."t  The  things 
with  which  ye  burdened  yourselves,  carrying  them  shoulder 
high  in  religious  processions,  are  things  laden,  mere 
baggage-bales,  a  burden  for  a  hack,  or  jade.  The 
nouns  are  mostly  feminine — the  Hebrew  neuter — in 
order  to  heighten  the  dead-weight  impression  of  the 
idols.  So  many  baggage-bales  for  beasts'  backs — such 
are  your  gods,  O  Babylonians  !  They  cower,  they  crouch 
tagether  (fall  Hmp  is  the  idea,  like  corpses)/  neither  are 
they  able  to  recover  the  burden,  and  themselves  ! — Hterally 
their  soul,  any  real  soul  of  deity  that  ever  was  in  them— 
into  captivity  are  they  gone. 

This  never  happened.  Cyrus  entered  Babylon  not 
in  spite  of  the  native  gods,  but  under  their  patronage, 
and  was  careful  to  do  homage  to  them.  Nabunahid,  the 
king  of  Babj^lon,  whom  he  supplanted,  had  vexed  the 
priests  of  Bel  or  Merodach ;  and  these  priests  had  been 
among  the  many  conspirators  in  favour  of  the  Persian. 
So  far,  then,  from  banishing  the  idols,  upon  his  entry 
into  the   city,  Cyrus  had  himself  proclaimed  as   ^'  the 

•  Crouches,  Kara' ;  cowers,  Kores.  f  Bredenkamp. 


xlvi.]  BEARING  OR  BORNE.  179 

servant  of  Merodach,"  restored  to  their  own  cities  the 
idols  that  Nabunahid  had  brought  to  Babylon,  and 
prayed,  "  In  the  goodness  of  their  hearts  may  all  the 
gods  whom  I  have  brought  into  their  strong  places 
daily  intercede  before  Bel  and  Nebo,  that  they  should 
grant  me  length  of  days.  May  they  bless  my  projects 
with  prosperity,  and  may  they  say  to  Merodach,  my 
lord,  that  Cyrus  the  king,  thy  worshipper,  and  Kam- 
byses,  his  son  (deserve  thy  favour)."  * 

Are  we,  then,  because  the  idols  w^ere  not  taken  into 
captivity,  as  our  prophet  pictures,  to  begin  to  believe 
in  him  less  ?  We  shall  be  guilty  of  that  error,  only 
when  we  cease  to  disallow  to  a  prophet  of  God  what 
we  do  allow  to  any  other  writer,  and  praise  him  when 
he  employs  it  to  bring  home  a  moral  truth — the  use  of 
his  imagination.  What  if  these  idols  never  were  packed 
off  by  Cyrus,  as  our  prophet  here  paints  for  us  ?  It 
still  remains  true  that,  standing  where  they  did,  or 
carried  away,  as  they  may  have  been  later  on,  by  con- 
querors, who  were  monotheists  indeed,  they  were  still 
mere  ballast,  so  much  dead-weight  for  weary  beasts. 

Now,  over  against  this  kind  of  religion,  which  may  be 
reduced  to  so  many  pounds  avoirdupois,  the  prophet 
sees  in  contrast  the  God  of  Israel.  And  it  is  but 
natural,  when  contrasted  with  the  dead-weight  of  the 
idols,  that  God  should  reveal  Himself  as  a  living  and 
a  lifting  God  :  a  strong,  unfailing  God,  who  carries  and 
who  saves.  Hearken  unto  Me,  O  House  of  Jacob,  and 
all  the  remnant  of  the  House  of  Israel;  burdens  from  the 
womby  things  carried  from  the  belly.  Burdens,  things 
carried,  are  the  exact  words  used  of  the  idols  in  ver.  i. 
Even  unto  old  age  I  am  He,  and  unto  grey  hairs  I  will 

*  Sayce,  Fresh  Light,  etc.,  p.  14a 


i8o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

bear — a  grievous  word,  used  only  of  great  burdens.  / 
have  made,  and  I  will  carry;  yea,  I  will  bear,  and  will 
recover.  Then  follow  some  verses  in  the  familiar  style. 
To  whom  will  ye  liken  Me,  and  match  Me,  and  compare 
Me,  that  we  may  be  like  ?  They  who  pour  gold  from 
a  bag,  and  silver  they  measure  off  with  an  ellwand — 
gorgeous,  vulgar  Babylonians  ! — they  hire  a  smelter,  and 
he  maketh  it  a  god — out  of  so  many  ells  of  silver ! — 
they  bow  down  to  it,  yea,  they  worship  it  I  They  carry 
him  upon  the  shoulder,  they  bear  him, — again  the  grievous 
word, — to  bring  him  to  his  station;  and  he  stands ;  from 
his  place  he  never  moves.  Yea,  one  cries  unto  him,  and 
he  answers  not;  from  his  trouble  he  doth  not  save  him. 
Remember  this,  and  show  yourselves  men — the  playing 
with  these  gilded  toys  is  so  unmanly  to  the  monotheist 
(it  will  be  remembered  what  we  said  in  ch.  iii.  about 
the  exiles  feeling  that  to  worship  idols  was  to  be  less 
than  a  man  *) — lay  it  again  to  heart,  ye  transgressors. 
Remember  the  former  things  of  old:  for  I  am  God,  El,  and 
there  is  none  else  ;  God,  Elohim,  and  there  is  none  like  Me. 
Publishing  fi^om  the  origin  the  issue,  and  from  ancient 
times  things  not  yet  done;  saying.  My  counsel  shall  stand, 
and  all  My  pleasure  shall  I  perform;  calling  out  of  the 
sunrise  a  Bird-of-prey,  from  the  land  that  is  far  off  the 
Man  of  My  counsel.  Yea,  I  have  spoken ;  yea,  I  will 
bring  it  in.  I  have  purposed ;  yea,  I  will  do  it.  Hearken 
unto  Me,  ye  obdurate  of  heart — that  is,  brave,  strong, 
sound,  but  too  sound  to  adapt  their  preconceived  notions 
to  God's  new  revelation  ; — ye  that  are  far  from  righteous- 
ness, in  spite  of  your  sound  opinions  as  to  how  it  ought 
to  come.  /  have  brought  near  My  righteousness,  in 
distinction  to  yours.     It  shall  not  be  far  off,  like  your 

*  See  p.  39  f. 


xlvi.]  BEARING  OR  BORNE.  l8i 

impossible  ideas,  and  My  salvation  shall  iwt  tarry,  and 
I  will  set  in  Zion  salvation ^  for  Israel  My  glory.  It  is 
evident  that  from  the  idolaters  Jehovah  has  turned 
again,  in  these  last  verses,  to  the  pedants  in  Israel, 
who  were  opposed  to  Cyrus  because  he  was  a  Gen- 
tile, and  who  cherished  their  own  obdurate  notions 
of  how  salvation  and  righteousness  should  come. 
Ah,  their  kind  of  righteousness  would  never  come, 
they  would  always  be  far  from  it !  Let  them  rather 
trust  to  Jehovah's,  which  He  was  rapidly  bringing 
near  in  His  own  way. 

Such  is  the  prophecy.  It  starts  a  truth,  which  bursts 
free  from  local  and  temporal  associations,  and  rushes 
in  strength  upon  our  own  day  and  our  own  customs. 
The  truth  is  this  :  it  makes  all  the  difference  to  a  man 
how  he  conceives  his  religion — whether  as  something 
that  he  has  to  carry,  or  as  something  that  will  carry  him. 
We  have  too  many  idolatries  and  idol  manufactories 
among  us  to  linger  longer  on  those  ancient  ones.  This 
cleavage  is  permanent  in  humanity — between  the  men 
that  are  trying  to  carry  their  religion,  and  the  men  that 
are  allowing  God  to  carry  them. 

Now  let  us  see  how  God  does  carry.  God's  carriage 
of  man  is  no  mystery.  It  may  be  explained  without 
using  one  theological  term  ;  the  Bible  gives  us  the  best 
expression  of  it.  But  it  may  be  explained  without  a 
word  from  the  Bible.  It  is  broad  and  varied  as  man's 
moral  experience. 

I.  The  first  requisite  for  stable  and  buoyant  life  is 
ground,  and  the  faithfulness  of  law.  What  sends  us 
about  with  erect  bodies  and  quick,  firm  step  is  the 
sense  that  the  surface  of  the  earth  is  sure,  that  gravita- 
tion will  not  fail,  that  our  eyes  and  the  touch  of  our 
feet  and  our  judgement  of  distance  do  not  deceive  us. 


1 82  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Now,  what  the  body  needs  for  its  world,  the  soul  needs 
for  hers.  For  her  carriage  and  bearing  in  life  the  soul 
requires  the  assurance,  that  the  moral  laws  of  the 
universe  are  as  conscience  has  interpreted  them  to  her, 
and  will  continue  to  be  as  in  experience  she  has  found 
them.  To  this  requisite  of  the  soul — this  indispen- 
sable condition  of  mcral  behaviour — God  gives  His 
assurance.  I  have  made,  He  says,  and  I  will  bear* 
These  words  were  in  answer  to  an  instinct,  that  must 
have  often  sprung  up  in  our  hearts  when  we  have  been 
struggling  for  at  least  moral  hope — the  instinct  which 
will  be  all  that  is  sometimes  left  to  a  man's  soul  when 
unbelief  lowers,  and  under  its  blackness  a  flood  of 
temptations  rushes  in,  and  character  and  conduct  feel 
impossible  to  his  strength — the  instinct  that  springs 
from  the  thought,  **Well,  here  I  am,  not  responsible 
for  being  here,  but  so  set  by  some  One  else,  and  the 
responsibility  of  the  life,  which  is  too  great  for  me,  is 
His."  Some  such  simple  faith,  which  a  man  can  hardly 
separate  from  his  existence,  has  been  the  first  rally 
and  turning-point  in  many  a  life.  In  the  moral  drift 
and  sweep  he  finds  bottom  there,  and  steadies  on  it, 
and  gets  his  face  round,  and  gathers  strength.  And 
God's  Word  comes  to  him  to  tell  him  that  his  instinct  is 
sure.      Yea,  I  have  made,  and  I  will  bear. 

2.  The  most  terrible  anguish  of  the  heart,  however, 
is  that  it  carries  something,  which  can  shake  a  man  off 
even  that  ground.  The  firmest  rock  is  of  no  use  to  the 
paralytic,  or  to  a  man  with  a  broken  leg.  And  the  most 
steadfast  moral  universe,  and  most  righteous  moral 
governor,  is  no  comfort — but  rather  the  reverse — to  the 

*  There  is  a  play  on  the  words  *ani  'asithi,  wa'ani,  'essa' — /  have 
made,  and  I  will  aid. 


xlvi.]  BEARING   OR  BORNE.  183 

man  with  a  bad  conscience,  whether  that  conscience  be 
due  to  the  guilt,  or  to  the  habit,  of  sin.  Conscience 
whispers,  ^'  God  indeed  made  thee,  but  what  if  thou 
hast  unmade  thyself?  God  reigns;  the  laws  of  life 
are  righteousness;  creation  is  guided  to  peace.  But 
thou  art  outlaw  of  this  universe,  fallen  from  God  of 
thine  own  will.  Thou  must  bear  thine  own  guilt, 
endure  thy  voluntarily  contracted  habits.  How  canst 
thou  believe  that  God,  in  this  fair  world,  would  bear 
thee  up,  so  useless,  soiled,  and  infected  a  thing  ?  "  Yet 
here,  according  to  His  blessed  Word,  God  does  come 
down  to  bear  up  men.  Because  man's  sunkenness 
and  helplessness  are  so  apparent  beneath  no  other 
burden  or  billows,  God  insists  that  just  here  He  is 
most  anxious,  and  just  here  it  is  His  glory,  to  lift  men 
and  bear  them  upward.  Some  may  wonder  what  guilt 
is  or  the  conviction  of  sin,  because  they  are  selfishly  or 
dishonestly  tracing  the  bitterness  and  unrest  of  their 
lives  to  some  other  source  than  their  own  wicked  wills ; 
but  the  thing  is  man's  realest  burden,  and  man's  realest 
burden  is  what  God  stoops  lowest  to  bear.  The  grievous 
word  for  bear,  "  sabal,"  which  we  emphasized  in  the 
above  passage,  is  elsewhere  in  the  writings  of  the  Exile 
used  of  the  bearing  of  sins,  or  of  the  result  of  sins. 
Our  fathet's  have  sinned,  and  are  not,  and  we  bear  their 
iniquities,'^  says  one  of  the  Lamentations.  And  in  the 
fifty-third  of  Isaiah  it  is  used  twice  of  the  Servant,  that 
He  bore  our  sorrows,  and  that  He  bare  their  iniquities.^ 
Here  its  application  to  God — to  such  a  God  as  we  have 
seen  bearing  the  passion  of  His  people's  woes — cannot 
fail  to  carry  with  it  the  associations  of  these  passages. 
When  it  is   said,  God  bears,  and  this  grievous  verb  is 

*  Lam.  V.  7.  t  Ver.  4,  second  clause,  and  vii. 


1 84  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

used,  we  remember  at  once  that  He  is  a  God,  who  does 
not  only  set  His  people's  sins  in  the  awful  light  of  His 
countenance,  but  takes  them  upon  His  heart.  Let  us 
learn,  then,  that  God  has  made  this  sin  and  guilt  of 
ours  His  special  care  and  anguish.  We  cannot  feel  it 
more  than  He  does.  It  is  enough :  we  may  not  be 
able  to  understand  v;hat  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  meant 
to  the  Divine  justice,  but  who  can  help  comprehending 
from  it  that  in  some  Divine  way  the  Divine  love  has 
made  our  sin  its  own  business  and  burden,  so  that  that 
might  be  done  which  we  could  not  do,  and  that  lifted 
which  we  could  not  bear  ? 

3.  But  this  gospel  of  God's  love  bearing  our  sins  is  of 
no  use  to  a  man  unless  it  goes  with  another — that  God 
bears  him  up  for  victory  over  temptation  and  for  attain- 
ment in  holiness.  It  is  said  to  be  a  thoroughly 
Mohammedan  fashion,  that  when  a  believer  is  tempted 
past  the  common  he  gives  way,  and  slides  into  sin 
with  the  cry,  '^  God  is  merciful ; "  meaning  that  the 
Almighty  will  not  be  too  hard  on  this  poor  creature, 
who  has  held  out  so  long.  If  this  be  Mohammedanism, 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  Mohammedanism  in  modern 
Christianity.  It  is  a  most  perfidious  distortion  of  God's 
will.  For  this  is  the  will  of  God^  even  our  sanctification ; 
and  God  never  gives  a  man  pardon  but  to  set  him  free 
for  effort,  and  to  constrain  him  for  duty.  And  here  we 
come  to  what  is  the  most  essential  part  of  God's  bearing 
of  man.  God,  as  we  have  seen,  bears  us  by  giving  us 
ground  to  walk  on.  He  bears  us  by  lifting  those 
burdens  from  our  hearts  that  make  the  firmest  ground 
slippery  and  impossible  to  our  feet.  But  He  bears  us 
best  and  longest  by  being  the  spirit  and  the  soul  and 
the  life  of  our  life.  Every  metaphor  here  falls  short  of 
the  reality.     By  inspired  men  the  bearing  of  God  has 


xlvi.]  BEARING  OR  BORNE.  185 

been  likened  to  a  father  carrying  his  child,  to  an  eagle 
taking  her  young  upon  her  wings,  to  the  shepherd  with 
the  lamb  in  his  bosom.  But  no  shepherd,  nor  mother- 
bird,  nor  human  father  ever  bore  as  the  Lord  bears. 
For  He  bears  from  within,  as  the  soul  lifts  and  bears 
the  body.  The  Lord  and  His  own  are  one.  To  me, 
says  he  who  knew  it  best,  To  me  to  live  is  Christ. 
It  is,  indeed,  difficult  to  describe  to  others  what  this 
inward  sustainment  really  is,  seating  itself  at  the  centre 
of  a  man's  life,  and  thence  affecting  vitally  every  organ 
of  his  nature.  The  strongest  human  illustration  is  not 
sufficient  for  it.  If  in  the  thick  of  the  battle  a  leader  is 
able  to  infuse  himself  into  his  followers,  so  is  Christ. 
If  one  man's  word  has  lifted  thousands  of  defeated 
soldiers  to  an  assault  and  to  a  victory,  even  so  have 
Christ's  lifted  millions :  lifted  them  above  the  habit  and 
depression  of  sin,  above  the  weakness  of  the  flesh, 
above  the  fear  of  man,  above  danger  and  death  and 
temptation  more  dangerous  and  fatal  still.  And  yet 
it  is  not  the  sight  of  a  visible  leader,  though  the 
Gospels  have  made  that  sight  imperishable ;  it  is  not 
the  sound  of  Another's  Voice,  though  that  Voice  shall 
peal  to  the  end  of  time,  that  Christians  only  feel.  It 
is  something  within  themselves;  another  self — purer, 
happier,  victorious.  Not  as  a  voice  or  example,  futile 
enough  to  the  dying,  but  as  a  new  soul,  is  Christ  in 
men ;  and  whether  their  exhaustion  needs  creative 
iorces,  or  their  vices  require  conquering  forces,  He 
gives  both,  for  He  is  the  fountain  of  life. 

4.  But  God  does  not  carry  dead  men.  His  carrying 
is  not  mechanical,  but  natural ;  not  from  below,  but  from 
within.  You  dare  not  be  passive  in  God's  carriage; 
for  as  in  the  natural,  so  in  the  moral  world,  whatever 
dies  is  thrown  aside  by  the  upward  pressure  of  life,  to 


i86  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

rot  and  perish.  Christ  showed  this  over  and  over  again 
in  His  ministry.  Those  who  make  no  effort — or,  if 
effort  be  past,  feel  no  pain — God  will  not  stoop  to 
bear.  But  all  in  whom  there  is  still  a  Hft  and  a  spring 
after  life :  the  quick  conscience,  the  pain  of  their  poverty, 
the  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness,  the  sacredness 
of  those  in  their  charge,  the  obligation  and  honour  of 
their  daily  duty,  some  desire  for  eternal  life — these,  how- 
ever weak,  He  carries  forward  to  perfection. 

Again,  in  His  bearing  God  bears,  and  does  not  over- 
bear, using  a  man,  not  as  a  man  uses  a  stick,  but  as  a 
soul  uses  a  body, — informing,  inspiring,  recreating  his 
natural  faculties.  So  many  distrust  religion,  as  if  it 
were  to  be  an  overbearing  of  their  originality,  as  if  it 
were  bound  to  destroy  the  individual's  pecuHar  fresh- 
ness and  joy.  But  God  is  not  by  grace  going  to  undo 
His  work  by  nature.  /  have  inade,  and  I  will  bear — 
will  bear  what  I  have  made.  Religion  intensifies  the 
natural  man. 

And  now,  if  that  be  God's  bearing — the  gift  of  the 
ground,  and  the  lifting  of  the  fallen,  and  the  being  a 
soul  and  an  inspiration  of  every  organ — how  wrong 
those  are  who,  instead  of  asking  God  to  carry  them, 
are  more  anxious  about  how  He  and  His  religion  are 
to  be  sustained  by  their  consistency  or  efforts  ! 

To  young  men,  who  have  not  got  a  religion,  and  are 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  conventional  religion  of 
the  day,  the  question  often  presents  itself  in  this  way : 
"  Is  this  a  thing  I  can  carry  ?  "  or  "  How  much  of  it 
can  I  afford  to  carry  ?  How  much  of  the  tradition  of 
the  elders  can  I  take  upon  myself,  and  feel  that  it  is  not 
mere  dead  weight  ?  "  That  is  an  entirely  false  attitude. 
Here  you  are,  weak,  by  no  means  master  of  yourself; 
with  a  heart  wonderfully  full  of  suggestions  to  evil ;  a 


xlvi.]  BEARING  OR  BORNE.  187 

world  before  you,  hardest  where  it  is  clearest,  seeming 
most  impossible  where  duty  most  loudly  calls ;  yet 
mainly  dark  and  silent,  needing  from  us  patience  oftener 
than  effort,  and  trust  as  much  as  the  exercise  of  our 
own  cleverness  ;  with  death  at  last  ahead.  Look  at  life 
whole,  and  the  question  you  will  ask  will  not  be,  Can 
I  carry  this  faith  ?  but.  Can  this  faith  carry  me  ?  Not, 
Can  I  afford  to  take  up  such  and  such  and  such 
opinions  ?  but,  Can  I  afford  to  travel  at  all  without 
such  a  God  ?  It  is  not  a  creed,  but  a  living  and  a 
lifting  God,  who  awaits  your  decision. 

At  the  opposite  end  of  life,  there  is  another  class  of 
men,  who  are  really  doing  what  young  men  too  often 
suppose  that  they  must  do  if  they  take  up  a  religion, 
— carrying  it,  instead  of  allowing  it  to  carry  them  ;  men 
who  are  in  danger  of  losing  their  faith  in  God,  through 
over-anxiety  about  traditional  doctrines  concerning  Him. 
A  great  deal  is  being  said  just  now  in  our  country  of 
upholding  the  great  articles  of  the  faith.  Certainly  let 
us  uphold  them.  But  do  not  let  us  have  in  our  churches 
that  saddest  of  ail  sights,  a  mere  ecclesiastical  proces- 
sion,— men  flourishing  doctrines,  but  themselves  with 
their  manhood  remaining  unseen.  We  know  the  pity 
of  a  show,  sometimes  seen  in  countries  on  the 
Continent,  where  they  have  not  given  over  carrying 
images  about.  Idols  and  banners  and  texts  will  fill  a 
street  with  their  tawdry,  tottering  progress,  and  you 
will  see  nothing  human  below,  but  now  and  then 
jostling  shoulders  and  a  sweaty  face.  Even  so  are 
many  of  the  loud  parades  of  doctrines  in  our  day  by 
men,  who,  in  the  words  of  this  chapter,  show  them- 
selves stout  of  heart  by  holding  up  their  religion,  but 
give  us  no  signs  in  their  character  or  conduct  that  their 
religion  is  holding  up  them.     Let  us  prize  our  faith, 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH, 


not  by  holding  it  high,  but  by  showing  how  high  it 
can  hold  us. 

Which  is  the  more  inspiring  sight, — a  banner  carried 
by  hands,  that  must  sooner  or  later  weary ;  or  the 
soldier's  face,  mantling  with  the  inexhaustible  strength 
of  the  God  who  lives  at  his  heart  and  bears  him  up  ? 


CHAPTER  XII. 

BABYLON, 
Isaiah  xlvii. 

THROUGHOUT  the  extent  of  Bible  history,  from 
Genesis  to  Revelation,  One  City  remains,  which 
in  fact  and  symbol  is  execrated  as  the  enemy  of  God 
and  the  stronghold  of  evil.  In  Genesis  we  are  called 
to  see  its  foundation,  as  of  the  first  city  that  wandering 
men  established,  and  the  quick  ruin,  which  fell  upon  its 
impious  builders.  By  the  prophets  we  hear  it  cursed 
as  the  oppressor  of  God's  people,  the  temptress  of  the 
nations,  full  of  cruelty  and  wantonness.  And  in  the 
Book  of  Revelation  its  character  and  curse  are  trans- 
ferred to  Rome,  and  the  New  Babylon  stands  over 
against  the  New  Jerusalem. 

The  tradition  and  infection,  which  have  made  the 
name  of  Babylon  as  abhorred  in  Scripture  as  Satan's 
own,  are  represented  as  the  tradition  and  infection  of 
pride, — the  pride,  which,  in  the  audacity  of  youth,  pro- 
poses to  attempt  to  be  equal  with  God  :  Go  to,  let  us 
build  us  a  city  and  a  tower ,  whose  top  may  touch  heaven, 
and  let  us  make  us  a  name;  the  pride,  which,  amid  the 
success  and  wealth  of  later  years,  forgets  that  there  is 
a  God  at  all :  Thou  sayest  in  thine  heart,  I  am,  and  there 
is  none  beside  me.  Babylon  is  the  Atheist  of  the  Old 
Testament,  as  she  is  the  Antichrist  of  the  New. 


190  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

That  a  city  should  have  been  originally  conceived  by 
Israel  as  the  arch-enemy  of  God  is  due  to  historical 
causes,  as  intelligible  as  those  which  led,  in  later  days, 
to  the  reverse  conception  of  a  city  as  God's  stronghold, 
and  the  refuge  of  the  weak  and  the  wandering.  God's 
earliest  people  were  shepherds,  plain  men  dwelling  in 
tents, — desert  nomads,  who  were  never  tempted  to 
rear  permanent  structures  of  their  own  except  as  altars 
and  shrines,  but  marched  and  rested,  waked  and  slept, 
between  God's  bare  earth  and  God's  high  heaven ; 
whose  spirits  were  chastened  and  refined  by  the  hunger 
and  clear  air  of  the  desert,  and  who  walked  their  wide 
world  without  jostling  or  stunting  one  another.  With 
the  dear  habits  of  those  early  times,  the  truths  of  the 
Bible  are  therefore,  even  after  Israel  has  settled  in 
towns,  spelt  to  the  end  in  the  images  of  shepherd  life. 
The  Lord  is  the  Shepherd,  and  men  are  the  sheep  of  His 
pasture.  He  is  a  Rock  and  a  Strong  Tower,  such  as 
rise  here  and  there  in  the  desert's  wildness  for  guidance 
or  defence.*  He  is  rivers  of  water  in  a  dry  place,  and 
the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary  land.  And  man's 
peace  is  to  lie  beside  still  waters,  and  his  glory  is,  not 
to  have  built  cities,  but  to  have  all  these  things  put 
under  his  feet — sheep  and  oxen  and  the  beasts  of  the 
field,  the  fowls  of  the  air  and  the  fish  of  the  sea. 

Over  against  that  lowly  shepherd  life,  the  first  cities 
rose,  as  we  can  imagine,  high,  terrible  and  impious. 
They  were  the  production  of  an  alien  race,t  a  people 
with  no  true  religion,  as  it  must  have  appeared  to 
the  Semites,  arrogant  and  coarse.  But  Babylon  had  a 
special  curse.    Babylon  was  not  the  earliest  city, — Akkad 

*  Cf.  Doughty,  Arabia  Deserfa. 

\  The  Turanians,  who  occupied  Mesopotamia  before  the  Semitic 
invasion,  were  the  first  builders  of  cities. 


xlvii.]  BABYLON.  191 

and  Erekh  were  famous  long  before, — but  it  is  Babylon 
that  the  Book  of  Genesis  represents  as  overthrown  and 
scattered  by  the  judgement  of  God.  What  a  contrast 
this  picture  in  Genesis, — and  let  it  be  remembered  that 
the  only  other  cities  to  which  that  book  leads  us  are 
Sodom  and  Gomorrah, — what  a  contrast  it  forms  to  the 
passages  in  which  classic  poets  celebrate  the  beginnings 
of  their  great  cities  !  There,  the  favourable  omens, 
the  patronage  of  the  gods,  the  prophecies  of  the 
glories  of  civil  life  ;  the  tracing  of  the  temple  and  the 
forum ;  visions  of  the  city  as  the  school  of  industry, 
the  treasury  of  wealth,  the  home  of  freedom.  Here, 
but  a  few  rapid  notes  of  scorn  and  doom  :  man's  miser- 
able manufacture,  without  Divine  impulse  or  omen  ;  his 
attempt  to  rise  to  heaven  upon  that  alone,  his  motive 
only  to  make  a  name  for  himself;  and  the  result — not, 
as  in  Greek  legend,  the  foundation  of  a  polity,  the  rise 
of  commerce,  the  growth  of  a  great  language,  by  which 
through  the  lips  of  one  man  the  whole  city  may  be 
swayed  together  to  high  purposes,  but  only  scattering 
and  confusion  of  speech.  To  history,  a  great  city  is 
a  multitude  of  men  within  reach  of  one  man's  voice. 
Athens  is  Demosthenes  ;  Rome  is  Cicero  persuading 
the  Senate ;  Florence  is  Savonarola  putting  by  his 
word  one  conscience  within  a  thousand  hearts.  But 
Babylon,  from  the  beginning,  gave  its  name  to  Babel, 
confusion  of  speech,  incapacity  for  union  and  for  pro- 
gress. And  all  this  came,  because  the  builders  of  the 
city,  the  men  who  set  the  temper  of  its  civilisation,  did 
not  begin  with  God,  but  in  their  pride  deemed  every- 
thing possible  to  unaided  and  unblessed  human  am- 
bition, and  had  only  the  desire  to  make  a  name  upon 
earth. 

The  sin  and  the  curse  never  left  the  generations,  who 


192  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

in  turn  succeeded  those  impious  builders.  Pride  and 
godlessness  infested  the  city,  and  prepared  it  for  doom, 
as  soon  as  it  again  gathered  strength  to  rise  to  heaven. 
The  early  nomads  had  watched  Babylon's  fall  from  afar; 
but  when  their  descendants  were  carried  as  captives 
within  her  in  the  time  of  her  second  glory,*  they  found 
that  the  besetting  sin,  which  had  once  reared  its  head 
so  fatally  high,  infected  the  city  to  her  very  heart. 
We  need  not  again  go  over  the  extent  and  glory  of 
Nebuchadrezzar's  architecture,  or  the  greatness  of  the 
traffic,  from  the  Levant  to  India,  which  his  poHcy  had 
concentrated  upon  his  own  wharves  and  markets. f  It 
was  stupendous.  But  neither  walls  nor  wealth  make 
a  city,  and  no  observant  man,  with  the  Hebrew's  faith 
and  conscience,  could  have  lived  those  fifty  years  in  the 
centre  of  Babylon,  and  especially  after  Nebuchadrezzar 
had  passed  away,  without  perceiving,  that  her  hfe  was 
destitute  of  every  principle  which  ensured  union  or 
promised  .  progress.  Babylon  was  but  a  medley  of 
peoples,  without  common  traditions  or  a  public  con- 
science, and  incapable  of  acting  together.  Many  of 
her  inhabitants  had  been  brought  to  her,  like  the  Jews, 
against  their  own  will,  and  were  ever  turning  from 
those  glorious  battlements  they  were  forced  to  build 
in  their  disgust,  to  scan  the  horizon  for  the  advent 
of  a  deliverer.  And  many  others,  who  moved  in  free- 
dom through  her  busy  streets,  and  shared  her  riches 

*  Babj'lon,  as  far  as  we  can  learn,  first  rose  to  power  about  the  time 
of  that  Amraphel  who  fought  in  the  Mesopotamian  league  against  the 
neighbours  and  friends  of  Abraham.  Amraphel  is  supposed  to  have 
been  the  father  of  Hammurabis,  who  first  made  Babylon  the  capital  of 
Chaldea.  It  scarcely  ever  again  ceased  to  be  such ;  but  it  was  not 
till  the  fall  of  Assyria,  about  625  B.C.,  and  the  rebuilding  of  Babylon 
by  Nebuchadrezzar  (604—561),  that  the  city's  second  and  greatest 
glory  began. 

t  See  ch.  iv,,  pp.  53-56. 


xlvii.]  BABYLON.  193 

and  her  joys,  were  also  foreigners,  and  bound  to  her 
only  so  long  as  she  ministered  to  their  pleasure  or 
their  profit.  Her  king  was  an  usurper,  who  had  in- 
sulted her  native  gods  ;  her  priesthood  was  against 
him.  And  although  his  army,  sheltered  by  the  forti- 
fications of  Nebuchadrezzar,  had  repulsed  Cyrus  upon 
the  Persian's  first  invasion  from  the  north,  conspiracies 
were  now  so  rife  among  his  oppressed  and  insulted 
subjects,  that,  on  Cyrus*  second  invasion,  Babylon 
opened  her  impregnable  gates  and  suffered  herself  to 
be  taken  without  a  blow.  Nor,  even  if  the  city's 
religion  had  been  better  served  by  the  king,  could  it 
in  the  long  run  have  availed  for  her  salvation.  For,  in 
spite  of  the  science  with  which  it  was  connected, — and 
this  "  wisdom  of  the  Chaldeans "  was  contemptible 
in  neither  its  methods  nor  its  results, — the  Babylonian 
religion  was  not  one  to  inspire  either  the  common 
people  with  those  moral  principles,  which  form  the 
true  stability  of  states,  or  their  rulers  with  a  reasonable 
and  consistent  policy.  Babylon's  religion  was  broken 
up  into  a  multitude  of  wearisome  and  distracting  details, 
whose  absurd  solemnities,  especially  when  administered 
by  a  priesthood  hostile  to  the  executive,  must  have 
hampered  every  adventure  of  war,  and  rendered  futile 
many  opportunities  of  victory.  In  fact,  Babylon,  for 
all  her  glory,  could  not  but  be  short-lived.  There  was 
no  moral  reason  why  she  should  endure.  The  masses, 
who  contributed  to  her  building,  were  slaves  who  hated 
her  ;  the  crowds,  who  fed  her  business,  would  stay  with 
her  only  so  long  as  she  was  profitable  to  themselves  ; 
her  rulers  and  her  priests  had  quarrelled ;  her  religion 
was  a  burden,  not  an  inspiration.  Yet  she  sat  proud, 
and  felt  herself  secure. 

It  is  just  these  features,  which  our  prophet  describes 
VOL.  II.  13 


194  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

in  ch.  xlvii.,  in  verses  more  notable  for  their  moral 
insight  and  indignation,  than  for  their  beauty  as  a  work 
of  literature.  He  is  certain  of  Babylon's  immediate 
fall  from  power  and  luxury  into  slavery  and  dishonour 
(vv.  1-3).  He  speaks  of  her  cruelty  to  her  captives 
(ver.  6),  of  her  haughtiness  and  her  secure  pride 
(vv.  7,  8).  He  touches  twice  upon  her  atheistic  self- 
sufficiency,  her  "autotheism/' — "/  am,  and  there  is  none 
beside  mej^  words  which  only  God  can  truly  use,  but 
words  which  man's  ignorant,  proud  self  is  ever  ready 
to  repeat  (vv.  8-10).  He  speaks  of  the  wearisomeness 
and  futility  of  her  religious  magic  (vv.  10-14).  And 
he  closes  with  a  vivid  touch,  that  dissolves  the  reality 
of  that  merely  commercial  grandeur  on  which  she 
prides  herself.  Like  every  association  that  arises  only 
from  the  pecuniary  profit  of  its  members,  Babylon  shall 
surely  break  up,  and  none  of  those,  who  sought  her 
for  their  selfish  ends,  shall  wait  to  help  her  one  moment 
after  she  has  ceased  to  be  profitable  to  them. 

Here  now  are  his  own  words,  rendered  literally 
except  in  the  case  of  one  or  two  conjunctions  and 
articles, — rendered,  too,  in  the  original  order  of  the 
words,  and,  as  far  as  it  can  be  determined,  in  the  rhythm 
of  the  original.  The  rhythm  is  largely  uncertain,  but 
some  verses — i,  5,  14,  15 — are  complete  in  that  measure 
which  we  found  in  the  Taunt-song  against  the  king  of 
Babylon  in  ch.  xiii.,*  and  nearly  every  line  or  clause 
has  the  same  metrical  swing  upon  it. 

Down  !  and  sit  in  the  dusty  O  virgin^ 

Daughter  of  Babel ! 
Sit  on  the  ground,  with  no  throne. 

Daughter  of  Khasdim  ! 

*  Vol.  i.,  pp.  409-315. 


xlvii.]  BABYLON.  195 

For  not  again  shall  they  call  thee 

Tender  and  Dainty. 
Take  to  thee  millstones^  and  grind  out  the  mealy 
Put  back  thy  veil,  strip  off  the  garment, 
Make  bare  the  leg,  wade  through  the  rivers ; 
Bare  be  thy  nakedness,  yea,  be  beholden  thy  shame  ! 

Vengeance  I  take,  and  strike  treaty  with  none. 


Our  Redeemer  I  Jehovah  of  Hosts  is  His  Name^ 
Holy  of  Israel  I 


Sit  thou  dumb,  and  get  into  darkness. 

Daughter  of  Khasdim  I 
For  not  again  shall  they  call  thee 

Mistress  of  Kingdoms. 
I  was  wroth  with  My  people,  profaned  Mine  inheritance, 

Gave  them  to  thy  hand: 
Thou    didst   show   them    no   mercy,    on   old   men   thou 
madest 

Thy  yoke  very  sore. 
And  thou  saidst.  For  ever  I  shall  be  mistress, 
Till  thou  hast  set  not  these  things  to  thy  heart, 

Nor  thought  of  their  issue. 


Therefore  now  hear  this,  Voluptuous^ 

Sitting  self-confident: 
Thou,  who  saith  in  her  heart,  "  /  am :  there  is  none  else. 
I  shall  not  sit  a  widow,  nor  know  want  of  children." 
Surely  shall  come  to  thee  both  of  these,  sudden,  the  same 
day, 

Childlessness  J  widowhood! 


196  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

To  their  full  come  upon  thee^  spite  of  the  mass  of  thy 

spells, 
Spite  of  the  wealth  of  thy  charms — to  the  full ! 


And  thou  wast  bold  in  thine  evil ;  thou  saidst, 

''None  doth  see  me  J* 
Thy  wisdom  and  knowledge — they  have  led  thee  astray, 
Till  thou  hast  said  in  thine  heart,  "  /  am  :  there  is  none 

else." 
Yet  there  shall  come,  on  thee  Evil, 

Thou  know'st  not  to  charm  it. 
And  there  shall  fall  on  thee  Havoc, 

Thou  canst  not  avert  it. 
And  there  shall  come  on  thee  suddenly^ 

Unawares,  Ruin. 
Stand  forth,  I  pray,   with  thy  charms,  with   the  wealth 

of  thy  spells — 
With  which  thou  hast  wearied  thyself  from  thy  youth  up — 

If  so  thou  be  able  to  profit. 

If  so  to  strike  terror! 
Thou  art  sick  with  the  mass  of  thy  counsels : 

Let  them  stand  up  and  save  thee — 
Mappers  of   heaven.    Planet-observers,    Tellers  at    new 
moons — 

From  what  must  befall  thee  ! 


Behold,  they  are  grown  like  the  straw  I 
Fire  hath  consumed  them; 

Nay,  they  save  not  their  life 

From  the  hand  of  the  flame  I 

— ^Tis  no  fuel  for  warmth, 

Fire  to  sit  down  at  I — 


xlvii.]  BABYLON.  J97 

Thus  are  they  grown  to  thee,  they  who  did  weary  thee^ 
Traders  of  thine  from  thy  youth  up; 
Each  as  he  could  pass  have  they  fled; 
None  is  thy  saviour! 

We,  who  remember  Isaiah's  elegies  on  Egypt  and 
Tyre,*  shall  be  most  struck  here  by  the  absence  of  all 
appreciation  of  greatness  or  of  beauty  about  Babylon. 
Even  while  prophesying  for  Tyre  as  certain  a  judgement 
as  our  prophet  here  predicts  for  Babylon,  Isaiah  spoke 
as  if  the  ruin  of  so  much  enterprise  and  wealth  were  a 
desecration,  and  he  promised  that  the  native  strength  of 
Tyre,  humbled  and  purified,  would  rise  again  to  become 
the  handmaid  of  religion.  But  our  prophet  sees  no 
saving  virtue  whatever  in  Babylon,  and  gives  her  not  the 
slightest  promise  of  a  future.  There  is  pity  through  his 
scorn  :  the  way  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  futility  of  the 
mass  of  Babylonian  science;  the  way  in  which  he  speaks 
of  her  ignorance,  though  served  by  hosts  of  counsellors ; 
the  way  in  which,  after  recalling  her  countless  partners 
in  traffic,  he  describes  their  headlong  flight,  and  closes 
with  the  words,  None  is  thy  saviour, — all  this  is  most 
pathetic.  But  upon  none  of  his  lines  is  there  one 
touch  of  awe  or  admiration  'or  regret  for  the  fall  of 
what  is  great.  To  him  Babylon  is  wholly  false,  vain, 
destitute — as  Tyre  was  not  destitute — of  native  vigour 
and  saving  virtue.  Babylon  is  sheer  pretence  and 
futility.  Therefore  his  scorn  and  condemnation  are 
thorough  ;  and  mocking  laughter  breaks  from  him,  now 
with  an  almost  savage  coarseness,  as  he  pictures  the 
dishonour  of  the  virgin  who  was  no  virgin — Bare  thy 
nakedness,  yea,  be  beholden  thy  shame;  and  now  in 
roguish   glee,   as  he   interjects   about   the   fire  which 

*  Vol.  i.,  pp.  275,  286,  294. 


198  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

shall  destroy  the  mass  of  Babylon's  magicians,  as- 
trologers and  haruspices :  No  coal  this  to  warm  oneself 
at,  fire  to  sit  down  before.  But  withal  we  are  not 
allowed  to  forget,  that  it  is  one  of  the  Tyrant's  poor 
captives,  who  thus  judges  and  scorns  her.  How  vividly 
from  the  midst  of  his  satire  does  the  prisoner's  sigh 
break  forth  to  God  : — 

"  Our  Redeemer!  Jehovah  of  Hosts  is  His  Name^ 
Holy  of  Israeli'' 

Not  the  least  interesting  feature  of  this  taunt-song 
is  the  expression  which  it  gives  to  the  characteristic 
Hebrew  sense  of  the  wearisomeness  and  immorahty  of 
that  system  of  divination,  which  formed  the  mass  of 
the  Babylonian  and  many  other  Gentile  religions. 
The  worship  of  Jehovah  had  very  much  in  common 
with  the  rest  of  the  Semitic  cults.  Its  ritual,  its 
temple-furniture,  the  division  of  its  sacred  year,  its 
terminology,  and  even  many  of  its  titles  for  the  Deity 
and  His  relations  to  men,  may  be  matched  in  the 
worship  of  Phoenician,  Syrian  and  Babylonian  gods,  or 
in  the  ruder  Arabian  cults.  But  in  one  thing  the  "  law 
of  Jehovah "  stands  by  itself,  and  that  is  in  its  in- 
tolerance of  all  augury  and  divination.  It  owed  this 
distinction  to  the  unique  moral  and  practical  sense 
which  inspired  it.  Augury  and  divination,  such  as  the 
Chaldeans  were  most  proficient  in,  exerted  two  most 
evil  influences.  They  hampered,  sometimes  paralysed, 
the  industry  and  politics  of  a  nation,  and  they  more 
or  less  confounded  the  moral  sense  of  a  people.  They 
were,  therefore,  utterly  out  of  harmony  with  the  practical 
sanity  and  Divine  morality  of  the  Jewish  law,  which 
strenuously  forbade   them  ;  while  the  prophets,  who 


xlvii.]  BABYLON,  199 

were  practical  men  as  well  as  preachers  of  righteous- 
ness, constantly  exposed  the  fatigue  they  laid  upon 
public  life,  and  the  way  they  distracted  attention  from 
the  simple  moral  issues  of  conduct.  Augury  and 
divination  wearied  a  people's  intellect,  stunted  their 
enterprise,  distorted  their  conscience.  Thy  spells, — the 
mass  of  thy  charms,  with  which  thou  hast  wearied  thyself 
from  thy  youth.  Thou  art  sick  with  the  mass  of  thy 
counsels.  Thy  wisdom  and  thy  knowledge!  they  have 
led  thee  astray.  When  ^Hhe  Chaldean  astrology" 
found  its  way  to  the  New  Babylon,  Juvenal's  strong 
conscience  expressed  the  same  sense  of  its  weari- 
someness  and  waste  of  time,* 

Ashes  and  ruins,  a  servile  and  squalid  life,  a  desolate 
site  abandoned  by  commerce, — what  the  prophet  pre- 
dicted, that  did  imperial  Babylon  become.  Not,  indeed, 
at  the  hand  of  Cyrus,  or  of  any  other  single  invader ; 
but  gradually  by  the  rivalry  of  healthier  peoples,  by 
the  inevitable  working  of  the  poison  at  her  heart, 
Babylon,  though  situated  in  the  most  fertile  and 
central  part  of  God's  earth,  fell  into  irredeemable 
decay.  Do  not  let  us,  however,  choke  our  interest 
in  this  prophecy,  as  so  many  students  of  prophecy 
do,  in  the  ruins  and  dust,  which  were  its  primary 
fulfilment.  The  shell  of  Babylon,  the  gorgeous  city 
which  rose  by  Euphrates,  has  indeed  sunk  into  heaps ; 
but  Babylon  herself  is  not  dead.  Babylon  never  dies. 
To  the  conscience  of  Christ's  seer,  this  mother  of  har- 
lots, though  dead  and  desert  in  the  East,  came  to  life 
again  in  the  West.  To  the  city  of  Rome,  in  his  day, 
John  transferred    word  by  word   the   phrases  of  our 


*  See  especially  Satires  III.  and  VI.,  and  cf.  Bagehot's  Physics  and 
Politics. 


THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


prophet  and  of  the  prophet  who  wrote  the  fifty-first  chap- 
ter of  the  Book  of  Jeremiah.  Rome  was  Babylon,  in  so 
far  as  Romans  were  filled  with  cruelty,  with  arrogance, 
with  trust  in  riches,  with  credulity  in  divination,  with 
that  waste  of  mental  and  moral  power  which  Juvenal 
exposed  in  her.  /  sit  a  queen,  John  heard  Rome  say  in 
her  heart,  and  am  no  widow,  and  shall  in  no  wise  see 
mourning.  Therefore  in  one  day  shall  her  plagues  come, 
death  and  mourning  and  famine,  and  she  shall  be  utterly 
burned  with  fire,  for  strong  is  the  Lord  God  which  judged 
her.*  But  we  are  not  to  leave  the  matter  even  here  : 
we  are  to  use  that  freedom  with  John,  which  John 
uses  with  our  prophet.  We  are  to  pass  by  the  par- 
ticular fulfilment  of  his  words,  in  which  he  and  his  day 
were  interested,  because  it  can  only  have  a  historical 
and  secondary  interest  to  us  in  face  of  other  Babylons 
in  our  own  day,  with  which  our  consciences,  if  they  are 
quick,  ought  to  be  busy.  Why  do  some  honest  people 
continue  to  confine  the  reference  of  those  chapters  in  the 
Book  of  Revelation  to  the  city  and  church  of  Rome  ? 
It  is  quite  true,  that  John  meant  the  Rome  of  his  day ; 
it  is  quite  true,  that  many  features  of  his  Babylon  may 
be  traced  upon  the  successor  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the 
Roman  Church.  But  what  is  that  to  us,  with  incarna- 
tions of  the  Babylonian  spirit  so  mucJi  nearer  ourselves 
for  infection  and  danger,  than  the  Church  of  Rome  can 
ever  be.  John's  description,  based  upon  our  prophet's, 
suits  better  a  commercial,  than  an  ecclesiastical  state, — 
though  self-worship  has  been  as  rife  in  ecclesiasticism, 
Roman  or  Reformed,  as  among  the  votaries  of  Mammon. 
For  every  phrase  of  John's,  that  may  be  true  of  the 
Church  of   Rome    in   certain  ages,   there  are  six  apt 


*  Rev.  xvii.,  xviii. 


xlvii.]  BABYLON.  201 

descriptions  of  the  centres  of  our  own  British  civilisa- 
tion, and  of  the  selfish,  atheistic  tempers  that  prevail  in 
them.  Let  us  ask  what  are  the  Babylonian  tempers 
and  let  us  touch  our  own  consciences  with  them. 

Forgetfulness  of  God,  cruelty,  vanity  of  knowledge 
(which  so  easily  breeds  credulity)  and  vanity  of  wealth, 
— but  the  parent  of  them  all  is  idolatry  of  self  Isaiah 
told  us  about  this  in  the  Assyrian  with  his  war ;  we  see 
it  here  in  Babylon  with  her  commerce  and  her  science  ; 
it  was  exposed  even  in  the  orthodox  Jews,*  for  they 
put  their  own  prejudices  before  their  God's  revelation  ; 
and  it  is  perhaps  as  evident  in  the  Christian  Church  as 
anywhere  else.  For  selfishness  follows  a  man  like  his 
shadow;  and  religion,  Hke  the  sun,  the  stronger  it 
shines,  only  makes  the  shadow  more  apparent.  But  to 
worship  your  shadow  is  to  turn  your  back  on  the  sun ; 
selfishness  is  atheism,  says  our  prophet.  Man's  self 
takes  God's  word  about  Himself  and  says,  /  am,  and 
there  is  none  beside  me.  And  he,  who  forgets  God,  is  sure 
also  to  forget  his  brother;  thus  self-worship  leads  to 
cruelty.  A  heavy  part  of  the  charge  against  Babylon  is 
her  treatment  of  the  Lord's  own  people.  These  were 
God's  convicts,  and  she,  for  the  time,  God's  minister 
of  justice.  But  she  unnecessarily  and  cruelly  oppressed 
them.  On  the  aged  thou  hast  very  heavily  laid  thy  yoke. 
God's  people  were  given  to  her  to  be  reformed,  but  she 
sought  to  crush  the  Hfe  out  of  them.  God's  purpose 
was  upon  them,  but  she  used  them  for  her  aggrandise- 
ment. She  did  not  feel  that  she  was  responsible  to 
God  for  her  treatment  even  of  the  most  guilty  and 
contemptible  of  her  subjects. 

In  all  this  Babylon  acted  in  accordance  with  what  was 

*  Ch.  xlv. 


202  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  prevailing  spirit  of  antiquity  ;  and  here  we  may 
safely  affirm  that  our  Christian  civihsation  has  at  least  a 
superior  conscience.  The  modern  world  does  recognise, 
in  some  measure,  its  responsibility  to  God  for  the  care 
even  of  its  vilest  and  most  forfeit  lives.  No  Christian 
state  at  the  present  day  would,  for  instance,  allow  its 
felons  to  be  tortured  or  outraged  against  their  will  in 
the  interests  either  of  science  or  of  public  amusement. 
We  do  not  vivisect  our  murderers  nor  kill  them  off  by 
gladiatorial  combats.  Our  statutes  do  not  get  rid  of 
worthless  or  forfeit  lives  by  condemning  them  to  be 
used  up  in  dangerous  labours  of  public  necessity.  On 
the  contrary,  in  prisons  we  treat  our  criminals  with 
decency  and  even  with  comfort,  and  outside  prisons  we 
protect  and  cherish  even  the  most  tainted  and  guilty 
lives.  In  all  our  discharge  of  God's  justice,  we  take 
care  that  the  inevitable  errors  of  our  human  fallibility 
may  fall  on  mercy's  side.  Now  it  is  true  that  in  the 
practice  of  all  this  we  often  fail,  and  are  inconsistent. 
The  point  at  present  is  that  we  have  at  least  a 
conscience  about  the  matter.  We  do  not  say,  like 
Babylon,  *'  I  am,  and  there  ts  none  beside  me.  There  is 
no  law  higher  than  my  own  will  and  desire.  I  can, 
therefore,  use  whatever  through  its  crime  or  its  use- 
lessness  falls  into  my  power,  for  the  increase  of  my 
wealth  or  the  satisfaction  of  my  passions."  We 
remember  God,  and  that  even  the  criminal  and  the 
useless  are  His.  In  wielding  the  power  which  His 
Law  and  Providence  put  into  our  hands  towards  many 
of  His  creatures,  we  remember  that  we  are  administer- 
ing His  justice,  and  not  satisfying  our  own  revenge,  or 
feeding  our  own  desire  for  sensation,  or  experimenting 
for  the  sake  of  our  science.  They  are  His  convicts,  not 
our  spoil.     In  our  treatment  of  them  we  are  subject  to 


xlvii.]  BABYLON.  203 

His  laws, — one  of  which,  that  fences  even  His  justice, 
is  the  law  against  cruelty ;  and  another,  for  which  His 
justice  leaves  room,  is  that  to  every  man  there  be  granted, 
with  his  due  penalty,  the  opportunity  of  penitence  and 
reform.  There  are  among  us  Positivists,  who  deny  that 
these  opinions  and  practices  of  modern  civilisation  are 
correct.  Carrying  out  the  essential  atheism  of  their 
school — /  am  man,  and  there  is  none  else:  that  in  the 
discharge  of  justice  and  the  discharge  of  charity  men 
are  responsible  only  to  themselves — they  dare  to  recom- 
mend that  the  victims  of  justice  should  be  made  the 
experiments,  however  painful,  of  science,  and  that 
charity  should  be  refused  to  the  corrupt  and  the  useless. 
But  all  this  is  simply  reversion  to  the  Babylonian  type, 
and  the  Babylonian  type  is  doomed  to  decay.  For 
history  has  writ  no  surer  law  upon  itself  than  this — 
that  cruelty  is  the  infallible  precursor  of  ruin. 

But  while  speaking  of  the  state,  we  should  remember 
individual  responsibilities  as  well.  Success,  even 
where  it  is  the  righteous  success  of  character,  is  a 
most  subtle  breeder  of  cruelty.  The  best  of  us  need 
most  strongly  to  guard  ourselves  against  censorious- 
ness.  If  God  does  put  the  characters  of  sinful  men 
and  women  into  our  keeping,  let  us  remember  that  our 
right  of  judging  them,  our  right  of  punishing  them,  our 
right  even  of  talking  about  them,  is  strictly  Hmited. 
Religious  people  too  easily  forget  this,  and  their  cruel 
censoriousness  or  selfish  gossip  warns  us  that  to  be  a 
member  of  the  Church  of  Christ  does  not  always  mean 
that  a  man's  citizenship  is  in  heaven  ;  he  may  well  be 
a  Babylonian  and  carry  the  freedom  of  that  city  upon 
his  face.  To  "  be  hard  on  those  who  are  down "  is 
Babylonian  ;  to  make  material  out  of  our  neighbours' 
faults,  for  our  pride,  or  for  love  of  gossip,  or  for  prurience, 


204  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

is  Babylonian.  Tliere  is  one  very  good  practical  rule 
to  keep  us  safe.  We  may  allow  ourselves  to  speak  about 
our  erring  brothers  to  men,  just  as  much  as  we  pray  for 
them  to  God.  But  if  we  pray  much  for  a  man,  he  will 
surely  become  too  sacred  to  be  made  the  amusement  of 
society  or  the  food  of  our  curiosity  or  of  our  pride. 

The  last  curse  on  Babylon  reminds  us  of  the  fatal 
looseness  of  a  society  that  is  built  only  upon  the 
interests  of  trade ;  of  the  loneliness  and  uselessness 
that  await,  in  the  end,  all  lives,  which  keep  themselves 
ahve  simply  by  trafficking  with  men.  If  we  feed  life 
only  by  the  news  of  the  markets,  by  the  interest  of 
traffic,  by  the  excitement  of  competition,  by  the  fever 
of  speculation,  by  the  passions  of  cupidity  and  pride, 
we  may  feel  healthy  and  powerful  for  a  time.  But 
such  a  life,  which  is  merely  a  being  kept  brisk  by  the 
sense  of  gaining  something  or  overreaching  some  one, 
is  the  mere  semblance  of  living;  and  when  the  inevit- 
able end  comes,  when  they  that  have  trafficked  with  us 
from  our  youth  depart,  then  each  particle  of  strength 
with  which  they  fed  us  shall  be  withdrawn,  and  we  shall 
fall  into  decay.  There  never  was  a  truer  picture  of  the 
quick  ruin  of  a  merely  commercial  community,  or  of  the 
ultimate  loneliness  of  a  mercenary  and  selfish  life,  than 
the  headlong  rush  of  traders,  each  as  he  could  find 
passage,  from  the  city  that  never  had  other  attractions 
even  for  her  own  citizens  than  those  of  gain  or  of 
pleasure. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

THE   CALL    TO   GO   FORTH, 
Isaiah  xlviii. 

ON  the  substance  of  ch.  xlviii.  we  have  already 
encroached,  and  now  it  is  necessary  only  to 
summarise  its  argument,  and  to  give  some  attention 
to  the  call  to  go  forth  from  Babylon,  with  which  it 
concludes. 

Chapter  xlviii.  is  addressed,  as  its  first  verse  declares, 
to  the  exiles  from  Judah  *  :  Hear  this^  Oh  House  of 
Jacob,  that  call  yourselves  by  the  name  of  Israel,  and 
from  the  waters  of  Judah  have  come  forth  :  that  is,  you 
so-called  Israelites,  who  spring  from  Judah.  But  their 
worship  of  Jehovah  is  only  nominal  and  unreal :  They 
who  swear  by  the  name  of  Jehovah,  and  celebrate  the  God 
of  Israel,  not  in  truth  and  not  in  righteousness;  although 
by  the  Holy  City  they  name  themselves,  and  upon  the  God 
of  Israel  they  lean — Jehovah  of  Hosts  is  His  Name  I 

*  Bredenkamp  will  have  it,  that  the  prophet  here  mentions  first 
Northern  Israel  and  then  Judah :  O  House  of  Jacob,  the  general 
term,  both  those  that  are  called  by  the  name  of  Israel,  and  that  have 
come  forth  front  the  waters  of  Judah.  But  this  is  entirely  opposed  to 
the  sj'ntax,  and  I  note  the  opinion  simply  to  show  how  precarious 
the  arguments  are  for  the  existence  of  pre-exilic  elements  in  Isa. 
xi.-xlviii.  The  point,  which  Bredenkamp  makes  by  his  rendering 
of  this  verse,  is  that  it  could  only  be  a  pre-exilic  prophet,  who  would 
distinguish  between  Judah  and  Northern  Israel ;  and  that,  therefore,  it 
might  be  Isaiah  himself  who  wrote  the  verse  ! 


2o6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

The  former  things  I  published  long  ago  ;  *  from  My 
mouth  they  went  forth,  and  I  let  them  be  heard — suddenly 
I  did  them^  and  they  came  to  pass.  Because  I  knew  how 
hard  thou  wert,  and  a  sinew  of  iron  thy  neck,  and  thy 
brow  brass.  And  I  published  to  thee  long  ago  ;  before  it 
came  to  pass  I  let  thee  hear  it,  lest  thou  shouldest  say:  Mine 
idol  hath  wrought  them,  and  my  Image  and  my  Casting 
hath  commanded  them.  Thou  didst  hear  it:  look  at  it 
whole, — now  that  it  is  fulfilled, — and  you  !  should  ye  not 
publish  it  ?  All  the  past  lies  as  a  unity,  prediction  and 
fulfilment  together  complete ;  all  of  it  the  doing  of 
Jehovah,  and  surely  enough  of  it  to  provide  the  text 
of  confession  of  Him  by  His  people.     But  now, — 

/  let  thee  hear  new  things — in  contrast  with  the  former 
things — from  noiv,  and  hidden  things,  and  thou  knewest 
them  not  Now  are  they  created,  and  not  long  ago ; 
and  before  to-day  thou  hadst  not  heard  them,  lest  thou 
shouldest  say.  Behold  I  knew  them.  Verily,^  thou  hadst 
not  heard,  verily,  thou  hadst  not  known,  verily,  long 
since  thine  ear  was  not  open;  because  I  knew  thou 
art  thoroughly  treacherous,  and  Transgressor-from-the- 
womb  do  they  call  thee. 

The  meaning  of  all  this  is  sufficiently  clear.  It 
is  a  reproach  addressed  to  the  formal  Israelites.  It 
divides  into  two  parts,  each  containing  an  explanation 
Because  I  knew  that,  etc. :  vv.  3-6a,  and  vv.  6b-g.  In 
the  first  part  Jehovah  treats  of  history  already  finished, 

*  Former  things  (ri'shonoth).  It  is  impossible  to  determine  whether 
these  mean  predictions  which  Jehovah  published  long  ago,  and  which 
have  already  come  to  pass,  or  former  events  which  He  foretold  long 
ago,  and  which  have  happened  as  He  said  they  would.  The 
distinction,  however,  is  immaterial. 

•j-  Literally,  also.  But  DJ,  a  cumulative  conjunction,  when  it  is  in- 
troduced to  repeat  the  same  thought  as  preceded  it,  means  jy^a,  truly, 
profecto,  imo. 


xlviii.]  THE  CALL  TO  GO  FORTH.  207 

both  in  its  prediction  and  fulfilment.  Many  of  the 
wonderful  things  of  old  Jehovah  predicted  long  before 
they  happened,  and  so  left  His  stubborn  people  no 
excuse  for  an  idolatry  to  which  otherwise  they  would 
have  given  themselves  (ver.  5).  Now  that  they  see  that 
wonderful  past  complete,  and  all  the  predictions  fulfilled, 
they  may  well  publish  Jehovah's  renown  to  the  world. 
In  the  first  part  of  His  reproach,  then,  Jehovah  is  dealing 
with  stages  of  Israel's  history  that  were  closed  before 
the  Exile.  The  former  things  are  wonderful  events, 
foretold  and  come  to  pass  before  the  present  generation. 
But  in  the  second  part  of  His  reproach  (vv.  6h-g) 
Jehovah  mentions  new  things.  These  new  things  are 
being  created  while  His  prophet  speaks,  and  they  have 
not  been  foretold  (in  contradistinction  to  the  former 
things  of  ver.  3).  What  events  fulfil  these  two  con- 
ditions ?  Well,  Cyrus  was  on  his  way,  the  destruction 
of  Babylon  was  imminent,  Israel's  new  destiny  was 
beginning  to  shape  itself  under  God's  hands  :  these  are 
evidently  the  things  that  are  in  process  of  creation  while 
the  prophet  speaks.  But  could  it  also  be  said  of  them, 
that  they  had  not  been  foretold  ?  This  could  be  said, 
at  least,  of  Cyrus,  the  Gentile  Messiah.  A  Gentile 
Messiah  was  something  so  new  to  Israel,  that  many, 
clinging  to  the  letter  of  the  old  prophecies,  denied,  as 
we  have  seen,  that  Cyrus  could  possibly  be  God's 
instrument  for  the  redemption  of  Israel.  Cyrus,  then, 
as  a  Gentile,  and  at  the  same  time  the  Anointed  of 
Jehovah,  is  the  new  thing  which  is  being  created  while 
the  prophet  speaks,  and  which  has  not  been  announced 
beforehand. 

How  is  it  possible,  some  may  now  ask,  that  Cyrus 
should  be  one  of  the  unpredicted  new  things  that  are 
happening  while  the  prophet  speaks,  when  the  prophet 


2o8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

has  already  pointed  to  Cyrus  and  his  advance  on 
Babylon  as  a  fulfilment  of  ancient  predictions  ?  The 
answer  to  this  question  is  very  simple.  There  were 
ancient  predictions  of  a  deHverance  and  a  deliverer 
from  Babylon.  To  name  no  more,  there  were 
Jeremiah's  *  and  Habakkuk's  ;  and  Cyrus,  in  so  far  as 
he  accomplished  the  deHverance,  was  the  fulfilment 
of  these  ancient  r'ishonoth.  But  in  so  far  as  Cyrus 
sprang  from  a  quarter  of  the  world,  not  hinted  at  in 
former  prophecies  of  Jehovah — in  so  far  as  he  was  a 
Gentile  and  yet  the  Anointed  of  the  Lord,  a  combina- 
tion not  provided  for  by  any  tradition  in  Israel— Cyrus 
and  his  career  were  the  new  things  not  predicted  before- 
hand, the  new  things  which  caused  such  offence  to 
certain  tradition-bound  parties  in  Israel. 

We  cannot  overestimate  the  importance  of  this 
passage.  It  supplies  us  with  the  solution  of  the 
problem,  how  the  presently-happening  deliverance  of 
Israel  from  Babylon  could  be  both  a  thing  foretold  from 
long  ago,  and  yet  so  new  as  to  surprise  those  Israelites 
who  were  most  devoted  to  the  ancient  prophecies. 
And  at  the  same  time  such  ot  us  as  are  content  to 
follow  our  prophet's  own  evidence,  and  to  place  him 
in  the  Exile,  have  an  answer  put  into  our  mouths,  to 
render  to  those,  who  say  that  we  destroy  a  proof  of  the 
Divinity  of  prophecy  by  denying  to  Isaiah  or  to  any  other 
prophet,  so  long  before  Cyrus  was  born,  the  mention  of 
Cyrus  by  name.  Let  such  objectors,  who  imagine 
that  they  are  more  careful  of  the  honour  of  God  and 
of  the  Divinity  of  Scripture,  because  they  maintain  that 
Cyrus  was  named  two  hundred  years  before  he  was 
born,  look  at  verse  7.     There  God  Himself  says,  that 

*  Ch.  XXV.,  which  is  undoubtedly  an  authentic  prophecy  ot  Jeremiah, 


xlviii.]  THE   CALL   TO   GO  FORTH.  209 

there  are  some  things,  which,  for  a  very  good  reason, 
He  does  not  foretell  before  they  come  to  pass.  We 
believe,  and  have  shown  strong  grounds  for  believing, 
that  the  selection  of  Cyrus,  the  mention  of  his  name, 
and  the  furtherance  of  his  arms  against  Babylon,  were 
among  those  new  things^  which  God  says  He  purposely 
did  not  reveal  till  the  day  of  their  happening,  and 
which,  by  their  novel  and  unpredicted  character,  offended 
so  many  of  the  traditional  and  stupid  party  in  Israel. 
Must  there  always  be  among  God's  people,  to-day  as  in 
the  day  of  our  prophet,  some  who  cannot  conceive  a  thing 
to  be  Divine  unless  it  has  been  predicted  long  before  ? 
In  vv.  3-8,  then,  God  claims  to  have  changed  His 
treatment  of  His  people,  in  order  to  meet  and  to 
prevent  the  various  faults  of  their  character.  Some 
things  He  told  to  them,  long  before,  so  that  they  might 
not  attribute  the  occurrence  of  these  to  their  idols. 
But  other  things  He  sprang  upon  them,  without  pre- 
dictions, and  in  an  altogether  novel  shape,  so  that  they 
might  not  say  of  these  things,  in  their  familiarity  with 
them,  We  knew  of  them  ourselves.  A  people  who 
were  at  one  time  so  stubborn,  and  at  another  so 
slippery,  were  evidently  a  people  who  deserved  nothing 
at  God's  hand.  Yet  He  goes  on  to  say,  vv.  9-1 1,  that 
He  will  treat  them  with  forbearance,  if  not  for  their 
sake,  yet  for  His  own  :  For  the  sake  of  My  Name  1 
defer  Mine  anger ,  and  for  My  praise — or  renown^  or 
reputation,  as  we  would  say  of  a  man  — /  will  refrain  for 
thee,  that  I  cut  thee  not  off.  Behold  I  have  smelted  thee^ 
but  not  as  silver :  I  have  tested  thee  in  the  furnace  of 
affliction.  For  Mine  oivn  sake,  for  Mine  own  sake,  I  am 
working; — for  how  was  My  Name  being  profaned!* — 
and  My  glory  to  another  I  will  not  give. 

*  The  Hebrew  has  not  the  words  My  Name.     The  LXX.  has  them. 
VOL.    II.  14 


210  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Then  he  gathers  up  the  sum  of  what  He  has  been 
saying  in  a  final  appeal. 

Hearken  unto  Me,  O  Jacob  j  and  Israel  My  Called:  I  am 
He;  I  am  First,  yea,  I  am  Last.  Yea,  My  hand  hath 
founded  Earth,*  and  My  right  hand  hath  spread  Heaven; 
when  I  call  unto  them  they  stand  together. 

Be  gathered,  all  of  you,  and  hearken,  Who  among  them 
— that  is,  the  Gentiles — hath  published  these  things? — that 
is,  such  things  as  the  following,  the  prophecy  given  in 
the  next  clause  of  the  verse  :  IVhom  Jehovah  loveth  shall 
perform  His  pleasure  on  Babylon,  and  his  arm  shall  be  on 
the  Chaldeans.  This  was  the  sum  of  what  Jehovah 
promised  long  ago  ;t  not  Cyrus'  name,  not  that  a  Gentile, 
a  Persian,  should  deliver  God's  people,  for  these  are 
among  the  new  things  which  were  not  published  before- 
hand, at  which  the  traditional  Israelites  were  offended, 
— but  this  general  fiat  of  God's  sovereignty,  that  whom- 
ever  Jehovah  loves,  or  likes,  he  shall  perform  His  pleasure 
on  Babylon.  I,  even  /,  have  spoken — this,  in  ver.  146, 
was  M}^  speaking.  Yea,  I  have  called  him;  I  have 
brought  him,  and  he  ivill  make  his  way  to  prosper.  Again 
emphasize  the  change  of  tense.  Cyrus  is  already  called, 
but,  while  the  prophet  speaks,  he  has  not  yet  reached 
his  goal  in  the  capture  of  Babylon. 

Some  ambassador  from  the  Lord,  whether  the 
prophet  or  the  Servant  of  Jehovah,  now  takes  up  the 
parable,  and,  after  presenting  himself,  addresses  a  final 
exhortation  to  Israel,  summing  up  the  moral  meaning 
of  the  Exile.     Draw  near  to  me,  hear  this ;    not  from 

*  A  second  time  without  article  though  applied  to  the  whole  world. 

f  Giesebrecht  takes  this  as  an  actual  quotation  from  some  former 
prophet :  a  specimen  of  the  ancient  prophecies  which  Jehovah  sent  to 
Israel,  and  which  were  now  being  fulfilled.  At  least  it  is  the  sum  of 
what  Jehovah's  prophets  had  often  predicted. 


xlviii.]  THE  CALL   TO  GO  FORTH.  211 

aforetime  in  secret  have  I  spoken;  from  the  time  that  it 
was,  there  am  I :  and  now  my  Lord,  Jehovah,  hath  sent 
me  with  His  Spirit.'^ 

Thus  saith  Jehovah,  thy  Redeemer,  Holy  of  Israel,  lam 
Jehovah  thy  God,  thy  Teacher  to  profit,  thy  Guide  in  the 
way  thou  shouldest  go :  Would  that  thou  hadst  hearkened 
to  My  commandments,  then  were  like  the  River  thy  peace, 
and  thy  righteousness  like  the  waves  of  the  sea  I  Then 
were  like  the  sand  thy  seed,  and  the  offspring  of  thy  bowels 
like  its  grains  /f  He  shall  not  be  cut  off,  nor  shall  perish 
his  name  from  before  Me. 

And  now  at  last  it  is  time  to  be  up.  Our  salvation 
is  nearer  than  when  first  we  believed.  Day  has  dawned, 
the  gates  are  opening,  the  Word  has  been  sufficiently 
spoken. 

Go  forth  from  Babel,  fly  from  the  Chaldeans; 
With  a  ringing  voice  publish  and  let  this  be  heard, 
Send  ye  it  out  to  the  end  of  the  earth. 
Say,  Redeemed  hath  Jehovah  His  Servant  Jacob. 
And  they  thirsted  not  in  the  deserts  He  caused  them  to 
walk; 

*  This  very  difficult  verse  has  been  attributed  either  to  Jehovah 
in  the  first  three  clauses  and  to  the  Servant  in  the  fourth  (Delitzsch)  ; 
or  in  the  same  proportion  to  Jehovah  and  the  prophet  (Cheyne  and 
Bredenkamp)  ;  or  to  the  Servant  all  through  (Orelli)  ;  or  to  the 
prophet  all  through  (Hitzig,  Knobel,  Giesebrecht.  See  the  latter's 
Beitrdge  zur  Kritik  Jesaia^s,  p.  136).  It  is  a  subtle  matter.  The 
present  expositor  thinks  it  clear  that  all  four  clauses  must  be  under- 
stood as  the  voice  of  one  speaker,  but  sees  nothing  in  them  to  decide 
finally  whether  that  speaker  is  the  Servant,  the  people  Israel,  in  which 
case  I  atn  there  would  have  reference  to  Israel's  consciousness  of  every 
deed  done  by  God  since  the  beginning  of  their  history  (cf.  ver.  6a) ; 
or  whether  the  speaker  is  the  prophet,  in  which  easel  am  there  would 
mean  that  he  had  watched  the  rise  of  Cyrus  from  the  first.  But  cf. 
Zech.  ii.  lo-ii,  Eng.  Ver.,  and  iv.  9. 

f  Or  like  its  bowels,  referring  to  the  sea. 


212  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Waters  from  a  rock  He  let  drop  for  them, 
Clave  a  rock  and  there  flowed  forth  waters  ! 
No  peace,  saith  fehovah,  for  the  wicked. 

We  have  arrived  at  the  most  distinct  stage  of  which 
our  prophecy  gives  trace.  Not  that  a  new  start  is  made 
with  the  next  passage.  Ch.  xHx.  is  the  answer  of  the 
Servant  himself  to  the  appeal  made  to  him  in  xlviii.  20 ; 
and  ch.  xlix.  does  not  introduce  the  Servant  for  the 
first  time,  but  simply  carries  further  the  substance  of 
the  opening  verses  of  ch.  xlii.  Nor  is  this  urgent 
appeal  to  Go  forth  from  Babylon,  which  has  come  to 
Israel,  the  only  one,  or  the  last,  of  its  kind.  It  is  renewed 
in  ch.  Hi.  11-12.  So  that  we  cannot  think  that  our 
prophet  has  even  yet  got  the  Fall  of  Bab\'lon  behind 
him.  Nevertheless,  the  end  of  ch.  xlviii.  is  the  end  of  the 
first  and  chief  stage  of  the  prophecy.  The  fundamental 
truths  about  God  and  salvation  have  been  laid  down  ;  the 
idols  have  been  thoroughly  exposed ;  Cyrus  has  been 
explained ;  Babylon  is  practically  done  with.  Neither 
Babylon,  nor  Cyrus,  nor,  except  for  a  moment,  the 
idols,  are  mentioned  in  the  rest  of  the  prophecy. 
The  Deliverance  of  Israel  is  certain.  And  what  now 
interests  the  prophet  is  first,  how  the  Holy  Nation 
will  accomplish  the  destiny  for  which  it  has  been  set 
free,  and  next,  how  the  Holy  City  shall  be  prepared 
for  the  Nation  to  inhabit.  These  are  the  two  themes  of 
chs.  xhx.  to  Ixvi.  The  latter  of  them,  the  Restoration 
of  Jerusalem,  has  scarcely  been  touched  by  our  prophet 
as  yet.  But  he  has  already  spoken  much  of  the 
Nation's  Destiny  as  the  Servant  of  the  Lord ;  and 
now  that  we  have  exhausted  the  subject  of  the 
deliverance  from  Babylon,  we  will  take  up  his  pro- 
phecies  on   the   Servant,  both   those  which  we   have 


xlviii.]  THE   CALL   TO   GO  FORTH.  213 

passed  over  in  chs.  xl.-xlviii.  and  those  which  still  lie 
ahead  of  us. 

Before  we  do  this,  however,  let  us  devote  a  chapter 
to  a  study  of  our  prophet's  use  of  the  word  righteous- 
ness, for  which  this  seems  to  be  as  convenient  a  place 
as  any  other. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE    RIGHTEOUSNESS    OF    ISRAEL    AND    THE 
RIGHTEOUSNESS    OF   GOD. 

Isaiah  xl.-lxvi. 

IN  the  chapters  which  we  have  been  studying  we 
have  found  some  difficulty  with  one  of  our  pro- 
phet's keynotes — right  or  righteousness.  In  the  chapters 
to  come  we  shall  find  this  difficulty  increase,  unless  we 
take  some  trouble  now  to  define  how  much  the  word 
denotes  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  There  is  no  part  of  Scripture, 
in  which  the  term  righteousness  suffers  so  many  develop- 
ments of  meaning.  To  leave  these  vague,  as  readers 
usually  do,  or  to  fasten  upon  one  and  all  the  technical 
meaning  of  righteousness  in  Christian  theology,  is  not 
only  to  obscure  the  historical  reference  and  moral  force 
of  single  passages, — it  is  to  miss  one  of  the  main 
arguments  of  the  prophecy.  We  have  read  enough 
to  see  that  righteousness  was  the  great  question  of  the 
Exile.  But  what  was  brought  into  question  was  not 
only  the  righteousness  of  the  people,  but  the  righteous- 
ness of  their  God.  In  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  righteousness  is 
more  often  claimed  as  a  Divine  attribute,  than  enforced 
as  a  human  duty  or  ideal.* 

*  It  is  only  by  confining  his  review  of  the  word  to  its  applications 
to  God,  and  overlooking  the  passages  which  attribute  it  to  the  people, 
that  Kruger,  Essai  sur  la  Theologie  disdie  xl.-lxvi.,  can  affirm  that 


xl.-Ixvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD.    215 

I.  Righteousness. 

Ssedheq,  the  Hebrew  root  for  righteousness,  had,  like 
the  Latin  "  rectus,"  in  its  earliest  and  now  almost  for- 
gotten uses,  a  physical  meaning.  This  may  have  been 
either  stratghtness,  or  more  probably  soundness^ — the 
state  in  which  a  thing  is  all  right*  Paths  of  righteous- 
ness^ in  Psalm  xxiii.,  ver.  4,  are  not  necessarily  straight 
paths,  but  rather  sure,  genuine,  safe  paths.f  Like  all 
physical  metaphors,  like  our  own  words  ^'  straight "  and 
*' right,"  the  applicability  of  the  term  to  moral  conduct 
was  exceedingly  elastic.  It  has  been  attempted  to 
gather  most  of  its  meaning  under  the  definition  of 
conformity  to  norm;  %  and  so  many  are  the  instances  in 
which  the  word  has  a  forensic  force,  §  as  of  vindication 
or  justification  J  that  some  have  claimed  this  for  its 
original,  or,  at  least,  its  governing  sense.  But  it  is 
improbable  that  either  of  these  definitions  conveys  the 
simplest  or  most  general  sense  of  the  word.  Even  if 
conformity  or  justification  were  ever  the  prevailing 
sense  of  ssedheq,  there  are  a  number  of  instances  in 

the  prophet  holds  throughout  to  a  single  idea  of  righteousness  (p.  36) 
On  this,  as  on  many  other  points,  it  is  Calvin's  treatment,  that  is  most 
sympathetic  to  the  variations  of  the  original. 

*  In  Arabic  the  cognate  word  is  applied  to  a  lance,  but  this  may 
mean  a  sound  or  fit  lance  as  well  as  a  straight  one.  "  Originem 
Schult.  de  defect,  hodiernis  §  214-224  ponit  in  rigore,  duritia,  coll. 

ifiS,^    lancea  dura,  al.  aequabilis  "  (Gesenii   Thesaurus,  art.  pTV). 

f  It  is  not  certain  whether  righteousness  is  here  used  in  a  physical 
sense  ;  and  in  all  other  cases  in  which  the  root  is  applied  in  the  Old 
Testament  to  material  objects,  it  is  plainly  employed  in  some  reflection 
of  its  moral  sense,  ^.^.,yws^  weights, /ws^  balance.  Lev.  xix.  36. 

X  "  Der  Zustand  welcher  der  Norm  entspricht."  Schultz,  Alt.  Test. 
Theologie,  4th  ed.,  p.  540,  n.  i. 

§  Cf.  Robertson  Smith,  Prophets  of  Israel,  p.  388,  and  Kautzsch's 
paper,  which  is  there  quoted. 


2i6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

which  its  meaning  far  overflows  the  hmits  of  such 
definitions.  Every  one  can  see  how  a  word,  which 
may  generally  be  used  to  express  an  abstract  idea,  like 
conformity y  or  a  formal  relation  towards  a  law  or  person, 
like  justification,  might  come  to  be  applied  to  the  actual 
virtues,  which  realise  that  idea  or  lift  a  character  into 
that  relation.  Thus  righteousness  might  mean  justice, 
or  truth,  or  almsgiving,  or  religious  obedience, — to  each 
of  which,  in  fact,  the  Hebrew  word  was  at  various 
times  specially  applied.  Or  righteousness  might  mean 
virtue  in  general,  virtue  apart  from  all  consideration 
of  law  or  duty  whatsoever.  In  the  prophet  Amos,  for 
instance,  righteousness  is  applied  to  a  goodness  so 
natural  and  spontaneous  that  no  one  could  think  of 
it  for  a  moment  as  conformity  to  norm  or  fulfilment 
of  law.* 

In  short,  it  is  impossible  to  give  a  definition  of  the 
Hebrew  word,  which  our  version  renders  as  righteous- 
ness, less  wide  than  our  EngHsh  word  right.  Righteous- 
ness is  right  in  all  its  senses, — natural,  legal,  personal, 
religious.  It  is  to  be  all  right,  to  be  right-hearted,  to 
be  consistent,  to  be  thorough  ;  but  also  to  be  in  the 
right,  to  be  justified,  to  be  vindicated  ;  and,  in  particular, 
it  may  mean  to  be  humane  (as  with  Amos),  to  be  just 
(as  with  Isaiah),  to  be  correct  or  true  to  fact  (as  some- 
times with  our  own  prophet),  to  fulfil  the  ordinances  of 
religion,  and  especially  the  command  about  almsgiving 
(as  with  the  later  Jews). 

Let  us  now  keep  in  mind  that  righteousness  could 
express  a  relation,  or  a  general  quahty  of  character,  or 


*  (< 


Die  Begriffe  HpHV  und  plV  .  .  .  bedeuten  nun  wirklich  bei  Amos 
mehr  als  die  juristische  Gerechtigkeit.  Indirect  gehen  die  Forderungen 
des  Amos  iiber  die  bios  rechtliche  Sphare  hinaus  "  (Duhm,  Theologte 
der  Propheten,  p.  115). 


xl.-lxvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD.    217 

some  particular  virtue.  For  we  shall  find  traces  of  all 
these  meanings  in  our  prophet's  application  of  the  term 
to  Israel  and  to  God. 

II.  The  Righteousness  of  Israel. 

One  of  the  simplest  forms  of  the  use  of  righteousness 
in  the  Old  Testament  is  when  it  is  employed  in  the  case 
of  ordinary  quarrels  between  two  persons ;  in  which  for 
one  of  them  to  be  righteous  means  to  be  right  or  in  the 
right*  Now  to  the  Hebrew  all  life  and  religion  was 
based  upon  covenants  between  two, — between  man  and 
man  and  between  man  and  God.  Righteousness  meant 
fidelity  to  the  terms  of  those  covenants.  The  positive 
contents  of  the  word  in  any  single  instance  of  its  use 
would,  therefore,  depend  on  the  faithfulness  and  delicacy 
of  conscience  by  which  those  terms  were  interpreted.  In 
early  Israel  this  conscience  was  not  so  keen  as  it  after- 
wards came  to  be,  and  accordingly  Israel's  sense  of 
their  righteousness  towards  God  was,  to  begin  with,  a 
comparatively  shallow  one.  When  a  Psalmist  asseverates 
his  righteousness  and  pleads  it  as  the  ground  for  God 
rewarding  him,  it  is  plain  that  he  is  able  with  sincerity 
to  make  a  claim,  so  repellent  to  a  Christian's  feeling, 
just  because  he  has  not  anything  like  a  Christian's 
conscience  of  what  God  demands  from  man.  As  Calvin 
says  on  Psalm  xviii.,  ver.  20,  ''  David  here  represents 
God  as  the  President  of  an  athletic  contest,  who  had 
chosen  him  as  one  of  His  champions,  and  David  knows 
that  so  long  as  he  keeps  to  the  rules  of  the  contest,  so 
long  will  God  defend  him."  It  is  evident  that  in  such 
an  assertion  righteousness  cannot  mean  perfect  inno- 
cence, but  simply  the  good  conscience  of  a  man,  who, 

♦  Gen,  xxxviii,  36.     Cf.  z  Sam.  xv,  4. 


2i8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

with  simple  ideas  of  what  is  demanded  from  him,  feels 
that  on  the  whole  "  he  has  "  (slightly  to  paraphrase 
Calvin)  '^  played  fair." 

Two  things,  almost  simultaneously,  shook  Israel  out 
of  this  primitive  and  naive  self-righteousness.  History 
went  against  them,  and  the  prophets  quickened  their 
conscience.*  The  effect  of  the  former  of  these  two 
causes  will  be  clear  to  us,  if  we  recollect  the  judicial 
element  in  the  Hebrew  righteousness, — that  it  often 
meant  not  so  much  to  be  right,  as  to  be  vindicated  or 
declared  right.  History,  to  Israel,  was  God's  supreme 
tribunal.  It  was  the  faith  of  the  people,  expressed  over 
and  over  again  in  the  Old  Testament,  that  the  godly 
man  is  vindicated  or  justified  by  his  prosperity  :  the  way 
of  the  ungodly  shall  perish.  And  Israel  felt  themselves 
to  be  in  the  right,  just  as  David,  in  Psalm  xviii.,  felt 
himself,  because  God  had  accredited  them  with  success 
and  victory.  But  when  the  decision  of  history  went 
against  the  nation,  when  they  were  threatened  with 
expulsion  from  their  land  and  with  extinction  as  a 
people,  that  just  meant  that  the  Supreme  Judge  of 
men  was  giving  His  sentence  against  them.  Israel 
had  broken  the  terms  of  the  Covenant.  They  had  lost 
their  right ;  they  were  no  longer  righteous.  The  keener 
conscience,  developed  by  prophecy,  swiftly  explained 
this  sentence  of  history.  This  declaration,  that  the 
people  were  unrighteous,  was  due,  the  prophet  said, 
to  the  people's  sins.  Isaiah  not  only  exclaimed.  Your 
country  is  desolate,  your  cities  are  burned  with  fire ;  he 
added,  in  equal  indictment,  How  is  the  faithful  city 
become  an  harlot!  it  was  full  of  justice,  righteousness 
lodged  in  it,  but  now  murderers :  thy  princes  are  rebellious, 

*  The  first  chapter  of  Isaiah  is  a  perfect  summary  of  these  two. 


xl.-lxvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD.    219 

they  judge  not  the  fatherless,  neither  doth  the  cause  of  the 
widow  come  before  them.  To  Isaiah  and  the  earlier 
prophets  Israel  was  unrighteous  because  it  was  so 
immoral.  With  their  strong  social  conscience,  right- 
eousness meant  to  these  prophets  the  practice  of  civic 
virtues, — truth-telling,  honesty  between  citizens,  tender- 
ness to  the  poor,  inflexible  justice  in  high  places. 

Here  then  we  have  two  possible  meanings  for  Israel's 
righteousness  in  the  prophetic  writings,  allied  and 
necessary  to  one  another,  yet  logically  distinct, — the 
one  a  becoming  righteous  through  the  exercise  of 
virtue,  the  other  a  being  shown  to  be  righteous  by 
the  voice  of  history.  In  the  one  case  righteousness 
is  the  practical  result  of  the  working  of  the  Spirit  of 
God  ;  in  the  other  it  is  vindication,  or  justification,  by 
the  Providence  of  God.  Isaiah  and  the  earlier  prophets, 
while  the  sentence  of  history  was  still  not  executed  and 
might  through  the  mercy  of  God  be  revoked,  incline  to 
employ  righteousness  predominantly  in  the  former  sense. 
But  it  will  be  understood  how,  after  the  Exile,  it  was 
the  latter,  which  became  the  prevailing  determination  of 
the  word.  By  that  great  disaster  God  finally  uttered  the 
clear  sentence,  of  which  previous  history  had  been  but 
the  foreboding.  Israel  in  exile  was  fully  declared  to  be 
in  the  wrong — to  be  unrighteous.  As  a  church,  she  lay 
under  the  ban ;  as  a  nation,  she  was  discredited  before 
the  nations  of  the  world.  And  her  one  longing,  hope 
and  effort  during  the  weary  years  of  Captivity  was  to 
have  her  right  vindicated  again,  was  to  be  restored  to 
right  relations  to  God  and  to  the  world,  under  the 
Covenant. 

This  is  the  predominant  meaning  of  the  term,  as 
applied  to  Israel,  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  Israel's  unright- 
eousness is  her  state  of  discredit  and  disgrace  under 


220  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  hands  of  God;  her  righteousness,  which  she 
hopes  for,  is  her  restoral  to  her  station  and  destiny  as 
the  elect  people.  To  our  Christian  habit  of  thinking, 
it  is  very  natural  to  read  the  frequent  and  splendid 
phrases,  in  which  righteousness  is  attributed  or  promised 
to  the  people  of  God  in  this  evangelical  prophecy,  as  if 
righteousness  were  that  inward  assurance  and  justifi- 
cation from  an  evil  conscience,  which,  as  we  are  taught 
by  the  New  Testament,  is  provided  for  us  through  the 
death  of  Christ,  and  inwardly  sealed  to  us  by  the  Holy 
Ghost,  irrespective  of  the  course  of  our  outward  fortune. 
But  if  we  read  that  meaning  into  righteousness  in 
Isa.  xl.-lxvi.,  we  shall  simply  not  understand  some 
of  the  grandest  passages  of  the  prophecy.  We  must 
clearly  keep  in  view,  that  while  the  prophet  ceaselessly 
emphasizes  the  pardon  of  God  spoken  home  to  the  heart 
of  the  people,  as  the  first  step  towards  their  restoral,  he 
does  not  apply  the  term  righteousness  to  this  inward 
justification,*  but  to  the  outward  vindication  and  ac- 
crediting of  Israel  by  God  before  the  whole  world,  in 
their  redemption  from  Captivity,  and  their  reinstatement 
as  His  people.  This  is  very  clear  from  the  way  in 
which  righteousness  is  coupled  with  salvation  by  the 
prophet,  as  (Ixii,  i)  :  /  will  not  rest  till  her  righteousness 
go  forth  as  brightness,  and  her  salvation  as  a  lamp  that 
hurneih.  Or  again  from  the  way  in  which  righteousness 
and  glory  are  put  in  parallel  (Ixii.  2)  :  And  the  nations  shall 
see  thy  righteousness,  and  all  kings  thy  glory.  Or  again 
in  the  way  that  righteousness  and  renown  are  identified 
(Ixi.  11):  The  Lord  Jehovah  will  cause  righteousness  and 
renown  to  spring  forth  before  all  the  nations.     In  each 

*  But  the  verb  to  make  righteous  or  justify  is  used  in  a  sense  akin 
to  the  New  Testament  sense  in  liii.  ll.  See  our  chapter  on  that 
prophecy. 


xl.-lxvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD.    221 

of  these  promises  the  idea  of  an  external  and  manifest 
splendour  is  evident ;  not  the  inward  peace  of  justifica- 
tion felt  only  by  the  conscience  to  which  it  has  been 
granted,  but  the  outward  historical  victory  appreciable 
by  the  gross  sense  of  the  heathen.  Of  course  the 
outward  implies  the  inward, — this  historical  triumph  is 
the  crown  of  a  religious  process,  the  result  of  forgive- 
ness and  a  long  purification, — but  while  in  the  New 
Testament  it  is  these  which  would  be  most  readily 
called  a  people's  righteousness,  it  is  the  former  (what 
the  New  Testament  would  rather  call  the  crown  of  life\ 
which  has  appropriated  the  name  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi. 
The  same  is  manifest  from  another  text  (xlviii.  18)  : 
O  that  thou  hadst  hearkened  to  My  commandments;  then 
had  thy  peace  been  as  the  River,  and  thy  righteousness  like 
the  waves  of  the  sea.  Here  righteousness  is  not  only  not 
applied  to  inward  morality,  but  set  over  against  this  as 
its  external  reward, — the  health  and  splendour  which  a 
good  conscience  produces.  It  is  in  the  same  external 
sense  that  the  prophet  talks  of  the  robe  of  righteousness 
with  its  bridal  splendour,  and  compares  it  to  the 
appearance  of  Spring  (Ixi.  lO-ii). 

For  this  kind  of  righteousness,  this  vindication  by 
God  before  the  world,  Israel  waited  throughout  the 
Exile.  God  addresses  them  as  they  that  pursue  right- 
eousness, that  seek  Jehovah  (li.  i).  And  it  is  a  closely 
allied  meaning,  though  perhaps  with  a  more  inward 
appHcation,  when  the  people  are  represented  as  praying 
God  to  give  them  ordinances  of  righteousness  (Iviii.  2), — 
that  is,  to  prescribe  such  a  ritual  as  will  expiate  their 
guilt  and  bring  them  into  a  right  relation  with  Him. 
They  sought  in  vain.  The  great  lesson  of  the  Exile 
was  that  not  by  works  and  .performances,  but  through 
simply  waiting  upon  the  Lord,  their  righteousness  should 


i.i±  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

shine  forth.     Even  this  outward    kind  of  justification 
was  to  be  by  faith. 

The  other  meaning  of  righteousness,  however, — the 
sense  of  social  and  civic  morality,  which  was  its  usual 
sense  with  the  earlier  prophets, — is  not  altogether 
excluded  from  the  use  of  the  word  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi. 
Here  are  some  commands  and  reproaches  which  seem  to 
imply  it.  Keep  judgement,  and  do  righteousness, — where, 
from  what  follows,  righteousness  evidently  means  ob- 
serving the  Sabbath  and  doing  no  evil  (Ivi.  i  ff).  And 
justice  is  fallen  away  backward,  and  righteousness  standeth 
afar  off,  for  truth  is  fallen  in  the  street,  and  steadfastness 
cannot  enter  (lix.  14).  These  must  be  terms  for  human 
virtues,  for  shortly  afterwards  it  is  said :  Jehovah  was 
displeased  because  there  was  no  justice.  Again,  They  seek 
Me  as  a  nation  that  did  righteousness  (Iviii.  2) ;  Hearken 
unto  Me,  ye  that  know  righteousness,  a  people — My  law  is 
in  their  hearts  (li.  7);  Thou  meetest  him  that  worketh 
righteousness  (Ixiv.  5) ;  No  one  sues  in  righteousness, 
and  none  goeth  to  law  in  truth  (lix.  4).  In  all  these 
passages  righteousness  means  something  that  man  can 
know  and  do,  his  conscience  and  his  duty,  and  is  rightly 
to  be  distinguished  from  those  others,  in  which  right- 
eousness is  equivalent  to  the  salvation,  the  glory,  the 
peace,  which  only  God's  power  can  bring.  If  the 
passages,  that  employ  righteousness  in  the  sense  of 
moral  or  religious  observance,  really  date  from  the 
Exile,  then  the  interesting  fact  is  assured  to  us  that 
the  Jews  enjoyed  some  degree  of  social  independence 
and  responsibility  during  their  Captivity.  But  it  is  a 
very  striking  fact  that  these  passages  all  belong  to 
chapters,  the  exilic  origin  of  which  is  questioned  even 
by  critics,  who  assign  the  rest  of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  to 
the  Exile.     Yet,  even  if  these  passages  have  all  to  be 


xl.-lxvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD.    223 

assigned  to  the  Exile,  how  few  they  are  in  number ! 
How  they  contrast  with  the  frequency,  with  which,  in 
the  earlier  part  of  this  book, — in  the  orations  addressed 
by  Isaiah  to  his  own  times,  when  Israel  was  still  an 
independent  state, — righteousness  is  reiterated  as  the 
daily,  practical  duty  of  men,  as  justice,  truthfulness 
and  charity  between  man  and  man !  The  extreme 
rarity  of  such  inculcations  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  warns  us 
that  we  must  not  expect  to  find  here  the  same  practical 
and  poHtical  interest,  which  formed  so  much  of  the 
charm  and  the  force  of  Isa.  i.-xxxix.  The  nation 
has  now  no  politics,  almost  no  social  morals.  Israel 
are  not  citizens  working  out  their  own  salvation  in  the 
market,  the  camp  and  the  senate ;  but  captives  waiting 
a  deliverance  in  God's  time,  which  no  act  of  theirs  can 
hasten.  It  is  not  in  the  street  that  the  interest  of 
Second  Isaiah  lies  :  it  is  on  the  horizon.  Hence  the 
vague  feeling  of  a  distant  splendour,  which,  as 
the  reader  passes  from  ch.  xxxix.  to  ch.  xl.,  replaces 
in  his  mind  the  stir  of  living  in  a  busy  crowd, 
the  close  and  throbbing  sense  of  the  civic  conscience, 
the  voice  of  statesmen,  the  clash  of  the  weapons  of 
war.  There  is  no  opportunity  for  individuals  to  reveal 
themselves.  It  is  a  nation  waiting,  indistinguishable 
in  shadow,  whose  outlines  only  we  see.  It  is  no  longer 
the  thrilling  practical  cry,  which  sends  men  into  the 
arenas  of  social  life  with  every  sinew  in  them  strung : 
I^earn  to  do  well;  seek  justice^  relieve  the  oppressed,  judge 
the  fatherless,  plead  for  the  widow.  It  is  rather  the  cry 
of  one  who  still  waits  for  his  working  day  to  dawn : 
/  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  to  the  hills,  from  whence  cometh 
my  help?  Righteousness  is  not  the  near  and  daily 
duty,  it  is  the  far-off  peace  and  splendour  of  skies,  that 
have  scarce  begun  to  redden  to  the  day. 


224  T^HE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


III.  The  Righteousness  of  God. 

But  there  was  another  Person,  whose  righteousness 
was  in  question  during  the  Exile,  and  who  Himself 
argues  for  it  throughout  our  prophecy.  Perhaps  the 
most  peculiar  feature  of  the  theology  of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi. 
is  its  argument  for  the  righteousness  of  Jehovah. 

Some  critics  maintain  that  righteousness,  Vv^hen  applied 
to  Jehovah,  bears  always  a  technical  reference  to  His 
covenant  with  Israel.  This  is  scarcely  correct.  Jehovah's 
dealings  with  Israel  were  no  doubt  the  chief  of  His 
dealings,  and  it  is  these,  which  He  mainly  quotes  to 
illustrate  His  righteousness  ;  but  we  have  already 
studied  passages,  which  prove  to  us  that  Jehovah's 
righteousness  was  an  absolute  quality  of  His  God- 
head, shown  to  others  besides  Israel,  and  in  loyalty 
to  obligations  different  from  the  terms  of  His  covenant 
with  Israel.  In  ch.  xH.  Jehovah  calls  upon  the 
heathen  to  match  their  righteousness  with  His ;  right- 
eousness was  therefore  a  quality  that  might  have  been 
attributed  to  them  as  well  as  to  Himself.  Again,  in 
xlv.  19, — ly  Jehovah,  speak  righteousness,  I  declare  things 
that  are  right, — righteousness  evidently  bears  a  general 
sense,  and  not  one  of  exclusive  application  to  God's 
dealing  with  Israel.  It  is  the  same  in  the  passage 
about  Cyrus  (xlv.  13):/  have  raised  him  up  in  right- 
eousness, I  will  make  straight  all  his  ways.  Though 
Cyrus  was  called  in  connection  with  God's  purpose 
towards  Israel,  it  is  not  that  purpose  which  makes  his 
calling  righteous,  but  the  fact  that  God  means  to  carry 
him  through,  or,  as  the  parallel  verse  says,  to  make 
straight  all  his  ways.  These  instances  are  sufficient 
to  prove  that  the  righteousness,  which  God  attributes 
to  His  words,    to    His   actions   and   to   Himself,  is  a 


xl.-lxvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD     225 

general  quality  not  confined  to  His  dealings  with  Israel 
under  the  covenant, — though,  of  course,  most  clearly 
illustrated  by  these. 

If  now  we  enquire,  what  this  absolute  quality  of 
Jehovah's  Deity  really  means,  we  may  conveniently 
begin  with  His  application  of  it  to  His  Word.  In 
ch.  xli.  He  summons  the  other  religions  to  exhibit  pre- 
dictions that  are  true  to  fact.  Who  hath  declared  it  on- 
ahead  that  we  may  know^  or  from  aforetime  that  we  may 
say,  He  is  ssaddtq*  Here  ssaddiq  simply  me?ns  right, 
correct,  true  to  fact.  It  is  much  the  same  meaning  in 
xliii.  9,  where  the  verb  is  used  of  heathen  predicters, 
that  they  may  be  shown  to  be  right,  or  correct  (English 
version,  justified).  But  when,  in  ch.  xlvi.,  the  word  is 
applied  by  Jehovah  to  His  own  speech,  it  has  a  mean- 
ing, of  far  richer  contents,  than  mere  correctness,  and 
proves  to  us  that  after  all  the  Hebrew  ssedheq  was 
almost  as  versatile  as  the  English  *' right."  The  follow- 
ing passage  shows  us  that  the  righteousness  of  Jehovah's 
speech  is  its  clearness,  straightforwardness  and  practical 
effectiveness  :  Not  in  secret  have  I  spoken,  in  a  place  of 
the  land  of  darkness, — this  has  been  supposed  to  refer 
to  the  remote  or  subterranean  localities  in  which  heathen 
oracles  mysteriously  entrenched  themselves, — I  have  not 
said  to  the  seed  of  Jacob,  In  Chaos  seek  Me.  I  am  Jehovah, 
a  Speaker  of  righteousness,  a  Publisher  of  straight  things. 
Be  gathered  and  come,  draw  near  together,  O  remnants  oj 
the  nations.  They  know  not  that  carry  the  log  of  their 
image,  and  pray  to  a  god  who  does  not  save.  Publish 
and  bring  near,  yea,  let  them  take  counsel  together.     Who 

*  At  first  sight  this  is  remarkably  like  the  cognate  Arabic  root, 
which  is  continually  used  for  truthful.  But  the  Hebrew  word  never 
meant  truthful  in  the  moral  sense  of  truth,  and  here  is  right  or 
correct. 

VOL.   11.  15 


226  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

caused  this  to  he  heard  of  old?  long  since  hath  published 
it  ?  Is  it  not  /,  Jehovah,  and  there  is  none  else  God  beside 
Me;  a  God  righteous  and  a  Saviour,  there  is  none  except 
Me.  Turn  unto  Me  and  be  saved,  all  ends  of  Earth  *  for 
I  am  God,  and  there  is  none  else.  By  Myself  have  I  sworn, 
gone  forth  from  My  mouth  hath  righteousness :  a  word  and 
it  shall  not  turn;  for  to  Me  shall  bow  every  knee,  shall 
swear  every  tongue.  Trtdy  in  Jehovah,  shall  they  say  of 
Me,  are  righteousnesses  and  strength.  To  Him  shall  it 
come,^  and  shamed  shall  be  all  that  are  incensed  against 
Him.  In  Jehovah  shall  be  righteous  and  renowned  all 
the  seed  of  Israel  (x\v.  19-25). 

In  this  very  suggestive  passage  righteousness  means 
far  more  than  simple  correctness  of  prediction.  Indeed, 
it  is  difficult  to  distinguish  how  much  it  means,  so 
quickly  do  its  varying  echoes  throng  upon  our  ear, 
from  the  new  associations  in  which  it  is  spoken.  A 
word  such  as  righteousness  is  like  the  sensitive  tones  of 
the  human  voice.  Spoken  in  a  desert,  the  voice  is 
itself  and  nothing  more ;  but  utter  it  where  the  land- 
scape is  crowded  with  novel  obstacles,  and  the  original 
note  is  almost  lost  amid  the  echoes  it  startles.  So  with 
the  righteousness  of  Jehovah;  among  the  new  associa- 
tions in  which  the  prophet  affirms  it,  it  starts  novel 
repetitions  of  itself  Against  the  ambiguity  of  the 
oracles,  it  is  echoed  back  as  clearness,  straightforward- 
ness, good  faith  (ver.  19);  against  their  opportunism  and 
want  of  foresight,  it  is  described  as  equivalent  to  the 
capacity  for  arranging  things  beforehand  and  predicting 

*  Earth  again  without  article,  though  obviously  referring  to  the 
world. 

f  Sense  doubtful  here.  Bredenkamp  translates  by  a  slight  change 
of  reading :  Only  speaking  by  Jehovah  :  Fulness  of  righteousness  and 
might  come  to  Him,  and  ashamed,  etc. 


xl.-lxvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD.     227 

what  must  come  to  pass,  therefore  as  purposefulness ; 
while  against  their  futihty,  it  is  plainly  effectiveness 
and  power  to  prevail  (ver.  23).  It  is  the  quality  in 
God,  which  divides  His  Godhead  with  His  power, 
something  intellectual  as  well  as  moral,  the  posses- 
sion of  a  reasonable  purpose  as  well  as  fidelity 
towards  it. 

This  intellectual  sense  of  righteousness,  as  reason- 
ableness or  purposefulness,  is  clearly  illustrated  by  the 
way  in  which  the  prophet  appeals,  in  order  to  enforce 
it,  to  Jehovah's  creation  of  the  world.  Thus  saith 
Jehovah,  Creator  of  the  heavens — He  is  the  God — Former 
of  the  Earth  and  her  Maker ^  He  founded  her;  not  Chaos 
did  He  create  her^  to  he  dwelt  in  did  He  form  her 
(xlv.  18).  The  word  Chaos  here  is  the  same  as  is 
used  in  opposition  to  righteousness  in  the  following 
verse.  The  sentence  plainly  illustrates  the  truth,  that 
whatever  God  does.  He  does  not  so  as  to  issue  in  con- 
fusion, but  with  a  reasonable  purpose  and  for  a  practical 
end.  We  have  here  the  repetition  of  that  deep,  strong 
note,  which  Isaiah  himself  so  often  sounded  to  the  com- 
fort of  men  in  perplexity  or  despair,  that  God  is  at  least 
reasonable,  not  working  for  nothing,  nor  beginning  only 
to  leave  off,  nor  creating  in  order  to  destroy.  The  same 
God,  says  our  prophet,  who  formed  the  earth  in  order 
to  see  it  inhabited,  must  surely  be  believed  to  be  con- 
sistent enough  to  carry  to  the  end  also  His  spiritual 
work  among  men.  Our  prophet's  idea  of  God's  right- 
eousness, therefore,  includes  the  idea  of  reasonableness  ; 
implies  rational  as  well  as  moral  consistency,  practical 
sense  as  well  as  good  faith  ;  the  conscience  of  a  reason- 
able plan,  and,  perhaps  also,  the  power  to  carry  it 
through. 

To  know  that  this  great  and  varied  meaning  belongs 


228  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

to  righteousness  gives  us  new  insight  into  those  passages, 
which  find  in  it  all  the  motive  and  efficiency  of  the 
Divine  action  :  It  pleased  Jehovah  for  His  righteous- 
ness^ sake  (xlii.  2 1") ;  His  righteousness,  it  upheld 
Him;  and  He  put  on  righteousness  as  a  breastplate 
nix.   1 6,   17). 

With  such  a  righteousness  did  Jehovah  deal  with 
Israel.  To  her  despair  that  He  has  forgotten  her  He 
recounts  the  historical  events  by  which  He  has  made 
her  His  own,  and  affirms  that  He  will  carry  them  on ; 
and  you  feel  the  expression  both  of  fidelity  and  of  the 
consciousness  of  ability  to  fulfil,  in  the  words,  /  will 
uphold  thee  with  the  right  hand  of  My  righteousness. 
Right  hand — there  is  more  than  the  touch  of  fidelity  in 
this  ;  there  is  the  grasp  of  power.  Again,  to  the  Israel 
who  was  conscious  of  being  His  Servant,  God  says, 
/,  Jehovah,  have  called  thee  in  righteousness;  and,  taken 
with  the  context,  the  word  plainly  means  good  faith 
and  intention  to  sustain  and  carry  to  success. 

It  was  easy  to  transfer  the  name  righteousness  from 
the  character  of  God's  action  to  its  results,  but  always, 
of  course,  in  the  vindication  of  His  purpose  and  word. 
Therefore,  just  as  the  salvation  of  Israel,  which  was  the 
chief  result  of  the  Divine  purpose,  is  called  Israel's 
righteousness,  so  it  \s  sXso  CdM^d  Jehovah^ s  righteousness. 
Thus,  in  xlvi.  13,  I  bring  near  My  righteousness;  and  in 
li.  5,  My  righteousness  is  near,  My  salvation  is  gone  forth; 
ver.  6,  My  salvation  shall  be  for  ever,  and  My  righteous- 
ness shall  not  be  abolished.  It  seems  to  be  in  the  same 
sense,  of  finished  and  visible  results,  that  the  skies  are 
called  upon  to  pour  down  righteousness,  and  the  earth  to 
open  that  they  may  be  fruitful  in  salvation,  and  let  her  cause 
righteousness  to  spring  up  together  (xlv.  8 ;  cf  Ixi.  10,  My 
Lord  Jehovah  will  cause  righteousness  to  spring  forth). 


xl.-lxvi.]  RIGHTEOUSNESS  OF  ISRAEL  AND  OF  GOD.    229 

One  passage  is  of  great  interest,  because  in  it 
righteousness  is  used  to  play  upon  itself,  in  its  two 
meanings  of  human  duty  and  Divine  effect — Ivi.  i, 
Observe  judgement — probably  religious  ordinances — and 
do  righteousness ;  for  My  salvation  is  near  to  come^  and 
My  righteousness  to  be  revealed. 


To  complete  our  study  of  righteousness  it  is  necessary 
to  touch  still  upon  one  point.  In  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  both  the 
masculine  and  feminine  forms  of  the  Hebrew  word  for 
righteousness  are  used,  and  it  has  been  averred  that 
they  are  used  with  a  difference.  This  opinion  is 
entirely  dispelled  by  a  collation  of  the  passages.  I 
give  the  particulars  in  a  note,  from  which  it  will  be  seen 
that  both  forms  are  indifferently  employed  for  each  of 
the  many  shades  of  meaning  which  righteousness  bears 
in  our  prophecies.* 

That  the  masculine  and  feminine  forms  sometimes 
occur,  with  the  same  or  with  different  meanings,  in  the 


*  pIV,  the  masculine,  is  used  sixteen  times;  HpT^,  twenty-four. 
Both  are  used  of  Jehovah  :  xHi.  21  IpTV,  and  lix.  16  IflplV.  Both  of 
His  speech:  masc.  in  xlv.  19,  fem.  in  xlv.  23  and  Ixiii.  i.  Perhaps 
the  passage  in  which  their  identity  is  most  plain  is  li.  5,  6,  where 
they  are  both  parallel  to  salvation  :  ver.  5,  My  righteousness  (m.)  is 
near;  ver.  6,  My  righteousness  (f)  shall  not  be  abolished.  Both 
are  used  of  the  people's  duty  :  lix.  4,  None  sueth  in  righteousness  (m.)  ; 
xlviii.  I,  But  not  in  truth  nor  in  righteousness  (f.)  ;  Ivi.  I,  Keep  justice 
and  do  righteousness  (f.)  And  both  are  used  of  the  people's  saved  and 
glorious  condition :  Iviii.  8,  Thy  righteousness  (m.)  shall  go  before  thee ; 
Ixii.  I,  Until  her  righteousness  (m.)  go  forth  as  brightness;  xlviii.  18, 
Thy  righteousness  (f )  as  the  waves  of  the  sea;  liv.  17,  Their  righteous- 
ness (f.)  which  is  of  Me.  Both  are  used  with  prepositions  (cf.  xUi.  6 
with  xlviii.  i),  and  both  with  possessive  pronouns.  In  fact,  there  is 
absolutely  no  difference  made  between  the  two. 


230  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

same  verse,  or  in  the  next  verse  to  one  another,  proves 
that  the  selection  of  them  respectively  cannot  be  due  to 
any  difference  in  the  authorship  of  our  prophecy.  So 
that  we  are  reduced  to  say  that  nothing  accounts  for 
their  use,  except,  it  might  be,  the  exigencies  of  the 
metre.     But  who  is  able  to  prove  this  ? 


BOOK  III. 
THE    SERVANT    OF    THE    LORD. 


BOOK  III. 

HAVING  completed  our  survey  of  the  fundamental 
truths  of  our  prophecy,  and  studied  the  subject 
which  forms  its  immediate  and  most  urgent  interest, 
the  deliverance  of  Israel  from  Babylon,  we  are  now 
at  liberty  to  turn  to  consider  the  great  duty  and 
destiny  which  lie  before  the  delivered  people — the 
Service  of  Jehovah.  The  passages  of  our  prophecy 
which  describe  this  are  scattered  both  among  those 
chapters  we  have  already  studied  and  among  those 
which  lie  before  us.  But,  as  was  explained  in  the 
Introduction,  they  are  all  easily  detached  from  their 
surroundings;  and  the  continuity  and  progress,  of 
which  their  series,  though  so  much  interrupted,  gives 
evidence,  demand  that  they  should  be  treated  by  us 
together.  They  will,  therefore,  form  the  Third  of  the 
Books,  into  which  this  volume  is  divided. 

The  passages  on  the  Servant  of  Jehovah,  or,  as  the 
English  reader  is  more  accustomed  to  hear  him  called, 
the  Servant  of  the  Lord,  are  as  follows :  xli.  8  ff ;  xhi. 
1-7,  18-25;  xhii.  passim^  especially  8-10 ;  xliv.  i,  21; 
xlviii.  20;  xlix.  1-9;  1.  4-1 1  ;  lii.  13-hii.  The  main 
passages  are  those  in  xli.,  xlii.,  xliii.,  xlix.,  1.,  and  lii.-liii. 
The  others  are  incidental  allusions  to  Israel  as  the 
Servant  of  the  Lord,  and  do  not  develop  the  character 
of  the  Servant  or  the  Service. 


234  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Upon  the  questions  relevant  to  the  structure  of  these 
prophecies — why  they  have  been  so  scattered,  and 
whether  they  were  originally  from  the  main  author  of 
Isa.  xl.-lxvi.,  or  from  any  other  single  writer, — ques- 
tions on  which  critics  have  either  preserved  a  discreet 
silence,  or  have  spoken  to  convince  nobody  but  them- 
selves,— I  have  no  final  opinions  to  offer.  It  may 
be  that  these  passages  formed  a  poem  by  themselves 
before  their  incorporation  with  our  prophecy ;  but  the 
evidence,  which  has  been  offered  for  this,  is  very  far 
from  adequate.  It  may  be  that  one  or  more  of  them 
are  insertions  from  other  authors,  to  which  our  prophet 
consciously  works  up  with  ideas  of  his  own  about  the 
Servant ;  but  neither  for  this  is  there  any  evidence  worth 
serious  consideration.  I  think  that  all  we  can  do  is  to 
remember  that  they  occur  in  a  dramatic  work,  which 
may,  partly  at  least,  account  for  the  interruptions  which 
separate  them ;  that  the  subject  of  which  they  treat  is 
woven  through  and  through  other  portions  of  Isa.  xL- 
liii.,  and  that  even  those  of  them  which,  like  ch.  xlix., 
look  as  if  they  could  stand  by  themselves,  are  led  up  to 
by  the  verses  before  them ;  and  that,  finally,  the  series 
of  them  exhibits  a  continuity  and  furnishes  a  distinct 
development  of  their  subject.     See  pp.  313,  314,  and 

336  ff. 

It  is  this  development  which  the  following  exposition 
seeks  to  trace.  As  the  prophet  starts  from  the  idea 
of  the  Servant  as  being  the  whole,  historical  nation 
Israel,  it  will  be  necessary  to  devote,  first  of  all,  a 
chapter  to  Israel's  peculiar  relation  to  God.  This  will 
be  ch.  XV.,  "  One  God,  One  People."  In  ch.  xvi.  we 
shall  trace  the  development  of  the  idea  through  the 
whole  series  of  the  passages ;  and  in  ch.  xvii.  we  shall 
give  the  New  Testament  interpretation  and  fulfilment  of 


BOOK  III.  235 


the  Servant.  Then  will  follow  an  exposition  of  the 
contents  of  the  Service  and  of  the  ideal  it  presents  to 
ourselves,  first,  as  it  is  given  in  Isa.  xlii.  1-9,  as  the 
service  of  God  and  man,  ch.  xviii.  of  this  volume  ;  then 
as  it  is  realised  and  owned  by  the  Servant  himself,  as 
prophet  and  martyr,  Isa.  xlix.-l.,  ch.  xix.  of  this  volume  ; 
and  finally  as  it  culminates  in  Isa.  lii.  13-liii.,  ch.  xx.  of 
this  volume. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

ONE  GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE, 
SAIAH  xli.  8-20,  xlii.-xliii. 

WE  have  been  listening  to  the  proclamation  of  a 
Monotheism  so  absolute,  that,  as  we  have  seen, 
modern  critical  philosophy,  in  surveying  the  history  of 
religion,  can  find  for  it  no  rival  among  the  faiths  of  the 
world.  God  has  been  exalted  before  us,  in  character 
so  perfect,  in  dominion  so  universal,  that  neither  the 
conscience  nor  the  imagination  of  man  can  add  to 
the  general  scope  of  the  vision.  Jesus  and  His  Cross 
shall  lead  the  w^orld's  heart  farther  into  the  secrets  of 
God's  love;  God's  Spirit  in  science  shall  more  richly 
instruct  us  in  the  secrets  of  His  laws.  But  these  shall 
thereby  only  increase  the  contents  and  illustrate  the 
details  of  this  revelation  of  our  prophet.  They  shall 
in  no  way  enlarge  its  sweep  and  outline,  for  it  is 
already  as  lofty  an  idea  of  the  unity  and  sovereignty 
of  God,  as  the  thoughts  of  man  can  follow. 

Across  this  pure  light  of  God,  however,  a  phenomenon 
thrusts  itself,  which  seems  for  the  moment  to  affect  the 
absoluteness  of  the  vision  and  to  detract  from  its 
sublimity.  This  is  the  prominence  given  before  God 
to  a  single  people,  Israel.  In  these  chapters  the 
uniqueness  of  Israel  is  as  much  urged  upon  us  as  the 
unity  of  God.     Is  He  the  One  God  in  heaven?  they 


xli.-xliii.]  ONE  GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE.  237 

are  His  only  people  on  earth,  His  electa  His  own^  His 
witnesses  to  the  end  of  the  earth.  His  guidance  of  them 
is  matched  with  His  guidance  of  the  stars,  as  if,  like 
the  stars  shining  against  the  night,  their  tribes  alone 
moved  to  His  hand  through  an  otherwise  dark  and 
empty  space.  His  revelation  to  humanity  is  given 
through  their  little  language ;  the  restoration  of  their 
petty  capital,  that  hill  fort  in  the  barren  land  of  Judah, 
is  exhibited  as  the  end  of  His  processes,  which  sweep 
down  through  history  and  affect  the  surface  of  the  whole 
inhabited  world.  And  His  very  righteousness  turns 
out  to  be  for  the  most  part  His  faithfulness  to  His 
covenant  with  Israel. 

Now  to  many  in  our  day  it  has  been  a  great  offence 
to  have  ^'the  curved  nose  of  the  Jew"  thus  thrust  in 
between  their  eyes  and  the  pure  light  of  God.  They 
ask.  Can  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  have  been  thus 
partial  to  one  people  ?  Did  God  confine  His  revelation 
to  men  to  the  literature  of  a  small,  unpolished  tribe? 
Even  most  uncritical  souls  have  trouble  to  understand 
why  salvation  is  of  the  Jews. 

The  chief  point  to  know  is  that  the  election  of  Israel 
was  an  election,  not  to  salvation,  but  to  service.  To 
understand  this  is  to  get  rid  of  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  the  difficulty  that  attaches  to  the  subject.  Israel 
was  a  means,  and  not  an  end ;  God  chose  in  him 
a  minister,  not  a  favourite.  No  prophet  in  Israel 
failed  to  say  this ;  but  our  prophet  makes  it  the 
burden  of  his  message  to  the  exiles.  Ye  are  My 
witnesses,  My  Servant  whom  I  have  chosen.  Ye  are 
My  witnesses,  and  I  am  God.  I  will  also  give  thee 
for  a  light  to  the  nations,  to  be  My  salvation  to  the 
end  of  the  earth  (xliii.  lo).  Numbers  of  other  verses 
might  be  quoted  to  the  same  effect,  that  "  there  is  no 


238  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

God  but  God,  and  Israel  is  His  prophet."*  But  if 
the  election  of  Israel  is  thus  an  election  to  service, 
it  is  surely  in  harmony  with  God's  usual  method, 
whether  in  nature  or  history.  So  far  from  such  a 
specialisation  as  Israel's  being  derogatory  to  the  Divine 
unity,  it  is  but  part  of  that  order  and  division  of  labour 
which  the  Divine  unity  demands  as  its  consequence 
throughout  the  whole  range  of  Being.  The  universe 
is  diverse.  To  every  man  his  own  work  is  the  proper 
corollary  of  God  over  all^  and  Israel's  prerogative  was 
but  the  specialisation  of  Israel's  function  for  God  in 
the  world.  In  choosing  Israel  to  be  His  mediator  with 
mankind,  God  did  but  do  for  religion  what  in  the 
exercise  of  the  same  practical  discipline  He  did  for 
philosophy,  when  He  dowered  Greece  with  her  gifts 
of  subtle  thought  and  speech,  or  with  Rome  when 
He  trained  her  people  to  become  the  legislators  of 
mankind.  And  how  else  should  work  succeed  but 
by  specialisation, — the  secret  as  it  is  of  fidelity  and 
expertness?  Of  fidelity — for  the  constraint  of  my 
duty  surely  lies  in  this,  that  it  is  due  from  me  and  no 
other ;  of  expertness — for  he  drives  best  and  deepest 
who  drives  along  one  line.  In  lighting  a  fire  you  begin 
with  a  kindled  faggot ;  and  in  lighting  a  world  it  was 
in  harmony  with  all  His  law,  physical  and  moral,  for 
God  to  begin  with  a  particular  portion  of  mankind. 

The  next  question  is,  Why  should  this  particular 
portion  of  mankind  be  a  nation,  and  not  a  single 
prophet,  or  a  school  of  philosophers,  or  a  church 
universal  ?  The  answer  is  found  in  the  condition  of 
the  ancient  world.  Amid  its  diversities  of  language 
and  of  racial  feeling,  a  missionary  prophet  travelling 

*  Wellhausen. 


xli.-xliii.]  ONE  GOD,   ONE  PEOPLE.  239 

like  Paul  from  people  to  people  is  inconceivable ;  and 
almost  as  inconceivable  is  the  kind  of  Church  which 
Paul  founded  among  various  nations,  in  no  other  bonds 
than  the  consciousness  of  a  common  faith.  Of  all  pos- 
sible combinations  of  men  the  nation  was  the  only  form, 
which  in  the  ancient  world  stood  a  chance  of  surviving 
in  the  struggle  for  existence.  The  nation  furnished 
the  necessary  shelter  and  fellowship  for  personal 
religion;  it  gave  to  the  spiritual  a  habitation  upon 
earth,  enlisted  in  its  behalf  the  force  of  heredity,  and 
secured  the  continuity  of  its  traditions.  But  the  service 
of  the  nation  to  religion  was  not  only  conservative,  it 
was  missionary  as  well.  It  was  only  through  a  people 
that  a  God  became  visible  and  accredited  to  the  world. 
Their  history  supplied  the  drama  in  which  He  played  the 
hero's  part.  At  a  time  when  it  was  impossible  to  spread 
a  religion,  by  means  of  literature,  or  by  the  example  of 
personal  holiness,  the  achievements  of  a  considerable 
nation,  their  progress  and  prestige,  furnished  a  uni- 
versally understood  language,  through  which  the  God 
could  publish  to  mankind  His  power  and  will ;  and  in 
choosing,  therefore,  a  single  nation  to  reveal  Himself  by, 
God  was  but  employing  the  means  best  adapted  for  His 
purpose.  The  nation  was  the  unit  of  religious  progress 
in  the  ancient  world.  In  the  nation  God  chose  as 
His  witness,  not  only  the  most  solid  and  permanent, 
but  the  most  widely  intelligible  and  impressive.* 

*  "  Revelation  is  never  revolutionary,  ...  As  a  rule,  revelation 
accepts  the  fragments  of  truth  and  adopts  the  methods  of  religion 
already  existing,  uniting  the  former  into  a  whole,  and  purifying  the 
latter  for  its  ovc^n  purposes,"  .  .  ,  For  instance,  "in  the  East  each 
people  had  its  particular  god.  The  god  and  the  people  were  correlative 
ideas,  that  which  gave  the  individuals  of  a  nation  unity  and  made  them 
a  people  was  the  unity  of  its  god  ;  as,  on  the  other  hand,  that  which 
gave  a  god  prestige  was  the  strength  and  victorious  career  of  his 


240  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

The  next  question  is,  Why  Israel  should  have  been 
this  singular  and  indispensable  nation  ?  When  God 
selected  Israel  to  serve  His  purpose,  He  did  so,  we  are 
told,  of  His  sovereign  grace.  But  this  strong  thought, 
which  forms  the  foundation  of  our  prophet's  assurance 
about  his  people,  does  not  prevent  him  from  dwelling 
also  on  Israel's  natural  capacity  for  rehgious  service. 
This,  too,  was  of  God.  Over  and  over  again  Israel 
hears  Jehovah  say :  /  have  created  thee,  I  have  formed 
thee,  I  have  prepared  thee.  One  passage  describes  the 
nation's  equipment  for  the  office  of  a  prophet ;  another 
their  discipline  for  the  life  of  a  saint ;  and  every  now 
and  then  our  prophet  shows  how  far  back  he  feels  this 
preparation  to  have  begun,  even  when  the  nation,  as 
he  puts  it,  was  still  in  the  womb.  How  easily  these 
well-worn  phrases  slip  over  our  lips  !  Yet  they  are 
not  mere  formulas.  Modern  research  has  put  a  new 
meaning  into  them,  and  taught  us  that  Israel's  creatioUy 
forming,  election,  polishing,  carriage,  and  defence  were 
processes  as  real  and  measurable  as  any  in  natural  or 
political  history.  For  instance,  when  our  prophet  says 
that  Israel's  preparation  began  from  the  womb, — /  am 
thy  moulder,  saith  Jehovah,  from  the  womb, — history  takes 
us  back  to  the  pre-natal  circumstance  of  the  nation, 
and  there  exhibits  it  to  us  as  already  being  tempered 
to  a  religious  disposition  and  propensity.  The  Hebrews 
were  of  the  Semitic  stock.  The  womb  from  which 
Israel  sprang  was  a  race  of  wandering  shepherds,  upon 
the  hungry  deserts  of  Arabia,  where  man's  home  is  the 

people.  The  self-consciousness  of  the  nation  and  its  religion  re-acted 
on  one  another,  and  rose  and  fell  simultaneously.  This  conception 
was  not  repudiated,  but  adopted  by  revelation ;  and,  as  occasion 
demanded,  purified  from  its  natural  abuses." — Professor  A.  B. 
Davidson,  Expositor,  Second  Series,  vol.  viii.,  pp.  257-8. 


xlL-xliii.]  ONE   GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE.  241 

flitting  tent,  hunger  is  his  discipline  for  many  months  of 
the  year,  his  only  arts  are  those  of  speech  and  war,  and 
in  the  long  irremediable  starvation  there  is  nothing  to 
do  but  to  be  patient  and  dream.  Born  in  these  deserts, 
the  youth  of  the  Semitic  race,  like  the  probation  of 
their  greatest  prophets,  was  spent  in  a  long  fast,  which 
lent  their  spirit  a  wonderful  ease  of  detachment  from 
the  world  and  of  religious  imagination,  and  tempered 
their  will  to  long  suflfering — though  it  touched  their 
blood,  too,  with  a  rancorous  heat  that  breaks  out  through 
the  prevailing  calm  of  every  Semitic  literature.*  They 
were  trained  also  in  the  desert's  august  style  of 
eloquence.  He  hath  made  my  month  like  a  sharp  sword; 
in  the  shadow  of  His  hand  hath  He  hid  me.]  A  "natural 
prophecy,"  as  it  has  been  called,  is  found  in  all  the 
branches  of  the  Semitic  stock.  No  wonder  that  from 
this  race  there  came  forth  the  three  great  universal 
religions  of  mankind — that  Moses  and  the  prophets, 
John,  Jesus  Himself  and  Paul,  and  Mohammed  were 
all  of  the  seed  of  Shem. 

This  racial  disposition  the  Hebrew  carried  with  him 
into  his  calling  as  a  nation.  The  ancestor,  who  gave  the 
people  the  double  name  by  which  they  are  addressed 
throughout  our  prophecy,  Jacob-Israel,  inherited  with 
all  his  defects  the  two  great  marks  of  the  religious 
temper.  Jacob  could  dream  and  he  could  wait.  Re- 
member him  by  the  side  of  the  brother,  who  could  so 
little  think  of  the  future,  that  he  was  willing  to  sell  its 
promise  for  a  mess  of  pottage ;  who,  though  God  was 

*  Mr.  Doughty,  in  his  most  interesting  account  of  the  nomads  of 
Central  Arabia,  the  unsophisticated  Semites  on  their  native  soil, 
furnishes  ample  material  for  accounting  for  the  strange  mixture  of 
passion  and  resignation  in  these  prophet-peoples  of  the  world. 

f  Ch.  xlix.  2. 
VOL.    II.  16 


242  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

as  near  to  him  as  to  Jacob,  never  saw  visions  or  wrestled 
with  angels ;  who  seemed  to  have  no  power  of  growth 
about  him,  but  carrying  the  same  character,  unchanged 
through  the  discipline  of  life,  finally  transmitted  it  in 
stereotype  to  his  posterity  ; — remember  Jacob  by  the 
side  of  such  a  brother,  and  you  have  a  great  part  of 
the  secret  of  the  emergence  of  his  descendants  from  the 
life  of  wandering  cattle-breeders  to  be  God's  chief 
ministers  of  religion  in  the  world.  Their  habits,  like 
their  father's,  might  be  bad,  but  they  had  the  tough 
and  malleable  constitution,  which  it  was  possible  to 
mould  to  something  better.  Like  their  father,  they 
were  false,  unchivalrous,  selfish,  '^with  the  herdsman's 
grossness  in  their  blood,"  and  much  of  the  rancour  and 
cruelty  of  their  ancestors,  the  desert-warriors,  but  with 
it  all  they  had  the  two  most  potential  of  habits — they 
could  dream  and  they  could  wait.  In  his  love  and 
hope  for  promised  Rachel,  that  were  not  quenched  or 
soured  by  the  substitution,  iifter  seven  years*  service  for 
her,  of  her  ill-favoured  sister,  but  began  another  seven 
years'  effort  for  herself,  Jacob  was  a  type  of  his  strange, 
tenacious  people,  who,  when  they  were  brought  face 
to  face  with  some  Leah  of  a  fulfilment  of  their  fondest 
ideals,  as  they  frequently  were  in  their  history,  took 
up  again  with  undiminished  ardour  the  pursuit  of  their 
first  unforgetable  love.  It  is  the  wonder  of  history, 
how  this  people  passed  through  the  countless  disap- 
pointments of  the  prophecies  to  which  they  had  given 
their  hearts,  yet  with  only  a  strengthening  expectation 
of  the  arrival  of  the  promised  King  and  His  kingdom. 
If  other  peoples  have  felt  a  gain  in  character  from  such 
miscarriages  of  belief,  it  has  generally  been  at  the  expense 
of  their  faith.  But  Israel's  experience  did  not  take  faith 
away  or  even  impair  faith's  elasticity.     We  see  their 


xli.-xliii.]  ONE   GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE.  243 

appreciation  of  God's  promises  growing  only  more 
spiritual  with  each  postponement,  and  patience  per- 
forming her  perfect  work  upon  their  character  ;  yet  this 
never  happens  at  the  cost  of  the  original  buoyancy  and 
ardour.  The  glory  of  it  we  ascribe,  as  is  most  due, 
to  the  power  of  the  Word  of  God ;  but  the  people  who 
could  stand  the  strain  of  the  discipline  of  such  a  word, 
its  alternate  glow  and  frost,  must  have  been  a  people  of 
extraordinary  fibre  and  frame.  When  we  think  of  how 
they  wore  for  those  two  thousand  years  of  postponed 
promise,  and  how  they  wear  still,  after  two  thousand 
years  more  of  disillusion  and  suffering,  we  cease  to 
wonder  why  God  chose  this  small  tribe  to  be  His 
instrument  on  earth.  Where  we  see  their  bad  habits, 
their  Creator  knew  their  sound  constitution,  and  the 
constitution  of  Israel  is  a  thing  unique  among  mankind. 
From  the  racial  temper  of  the  elect  nation  we  pass 
to  their  history,  on  the  singularity  of  which  our  prophet 
dwells  with  emphasis.  Israel's  political  origin  had 
no  other  reason  than  a  call  to  God's  service.  Other 
peoples  grew,  as  it  were,  from  the  soil ;  they  were  the 
product  of  a  fatherland,  a  climate,  certain  physical 
environments  :  root  them  out  of  these,  and,  as  nations, 
they  ceased  to  be.  But  Israel  had  not  been  so  nursed 
into  nationality  on  the  lap  of  nature.  The  captive 
children  ot  Jacob  had  sprung  into  unity  and  inde- 
pendence as  a  nation  at  the  special  call  of  God,  and 
to  serve  His  will  in  the  world, — His  will  that  so  lay 
athwart  the  natural  tendencies  of  the  peoples.  All 
down  their  history  it  is  wonderful  to  see  how  it  was  the 
conscience  of  this  service,  which  in  periods  of  progress 
was  the  real  national  genius  in  Israel,  and  in  times  of 
decay  or  of  political  dissolution  upheld  the  assurance 
of  the  nation's  survival.    Whenever  a  ruler  like  Ahaz 


244  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH 

forgot  that  Israel's  imperishableness  was  bound  up  with 
their  faithfulness  to  God's  service,  and  sought  to  pre- 
serve his  throne  by  alliances  with  the  world-powers, 
then  it  was  that  Israel  were  most  in  danger  of  absorption 
into  the  world.  And,  conversely,  when  disaster  came 
down,  and  there  was  no  hope  in  the  sky,  it  was  upon 
the  inward  sense  of  their  election  to  the  service  of  God 
that  the  prophets  rallied  the  people's  faith  and  assured 
them  of  their  survival  as  a  nation.  They  brought  to 
Israel  that  sovereign  message,  which  renders  all  who 
hear  it  immortal  :  "  God  has  a  service  for  you  to  serve 
upon  earth."  In  the  Exile  especially,  the  wonderful 
survival  of  the  nation,  with  the  subservience  of  all 
history  to  that  end,  is  made  to  turn  on  this, — that 
Israel  has  a  unique  purpose  to  serve.  When  Jere  riah 
and  Ezekiel  seek  to  assure  the  captives  of  their  return 
to  the  land  and  of  the  restoration  of  the  people,  they 
commend  so  unhkely  a  promise  by  reminding  them  that 
the  nation  is  the  Servant  of  God.  This  name,  applied 
by  them  for  the  first  time  to  the  nation  as  a  whole, 
they  bind  up  with  the  national  existence.  Fear  thou  not, 
O  My  Servant  Jacob,  saith  Jehovah  ;  neither  be  dismayed, 
O  Israel :  for,  lo,  I  will  save  thee  from  afar,  and  thy  seed 
from  the  land  of  their  captivity*  These  words  plainly 
say,  that  Israel  as  a  nation  cannot  die,  for  God  has  a 
use  for  them  to  serve.  The  singularity  of  Israel's  re- 
demption from  Babylon  is  due  to  the  singularity  of  the 
service  that  God  has  for  the  nation  to  perform.  Our 
prophet  speaks  in  the  same  strain  :  Thou,  Israel,  My  Ser- 
vant, Jacob  whom  I  have  chosen,  seed  of  Abraham  My  lover, 
whom  I  took  hold  of  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  and  its  corners. 

*  Jer.  XXX.  lo,  cf.  xlvi.   27;  also  Ezek.  xxxvii.  25:  And  they  shall 
dwell  in  the  landihati  have  given  My  servant  Jacob.    Cf.  xxviii.  25. 


xli.-xliii.]  ONE  GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE.  245 

/  have  called  thee  and  said  unto  thee,  My  Servant  art  thoUy 
I  have  chosen  thee  and  have  not  cast  thee  away  (ch.  xli.  8  ff). 
No  one  can  miss  the  force  of  these  words.  They  are  the 
assurance  of  Israel's  miraculous  survival,  not  because 
he  is  God's  favourite,  but  because  he  is  God's  servant, 
with  a  unique  work  in  the  world.  Many  other  verses 
repeat  the  same  truth.*  They  call  Israel  the  Servant^ 
and  Jacob  the  chosen,  of  God,  in  order  to  persuade  the 
people  that  the}'^  are  not  forgotten  of  Him,  and  that 
their  seed  shall  live  and  be  blessed.  Israel  survives 
because  he  serves — Sef^vus  servatur. 

Now  for  this  service, — which  had  been  the  purpose 
of  the  nation's  election  at  first,  the  mainstay  of  its  unique 
preservation  since,  and  the  reason  of  all  its  singular 
prF  eminence  before  God, — Israel  was  equipped  by 
two  great  experiences.  These  were  Redemption  and 
Revelation. 

On  the  former  redemptions  of  Israel  from  the  power 
of  other  nations  our  prophet  does  not  dwell  much.  You 
feel,  that  they  are  present  to  his  mind,  for  he  sometimes 
describes  the  coming  redemption  from  Babylon  in 
terms  of  them.  And  once,  in  an  appeal  to  the  Arm  of 
Jehovah,  he  calls  out :  Awake  like  the  days  of  old,  ancient 
generations  I  Art  thou  not  it  that  hewed  Rahah  in  pieces, 
that  pierced  the  Dragon  ?  Art  thou  not  it  which  dried  up 
the  sea,  the  waters  of  the  great  deep;  that  made  the  depths  of 
the  sea  a  way  of  passage  for  the  redeemed  ?  f  There  is, 
too,  that  beautiful  passage  in  ch.  Ixiii.,  which  makes 
mention  of  the  lovingkindnesses  of  Jehovah,  according  to 
all  that  He  hath  bestowed  upon  us;  which  describes  the 
carriage  of  tlie  people  all  the  days  of  old,  how  He  brought 
them  out  of  the  sea,  caused  His  glorious  arm  to  go  at  the 

*  xliv.  I,  21 ;  xlviii.  20,  etc.  f  Ch.  H.  9,  lO. 


246  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

right  hand  of  Moses,  divided  the  water  before  them,  led 
them  through  the  deeps  as  a  horse  on  the  meadow,  that  they 
stumbled  not.  But,  on  the  whole,  our  prophet  is  too 
much  engrossed  with  the  immediate  prospect  of  release 
from  Babylon,  to  remember  that  past,  of  which  it  has 
been  truly  said,  He  hath  not  dealt  so  with  any  people.  It 
is  the  new  glory  that  is  upon  him.  He  counts  the  . 
deliverance  from  Babylon  as  already  come ;  to  his 
rapt  eye  it  is  its  marvellous  power  and  costliness, 
which  already  clothes  the  people  in  their  unique 
brilliance  and  honour.  Thus  saith  Jehovah,  your  Re- 
deemer, the  Holy  One  of  Israel:  For  your  sake  have  I  sent 
to  Babylon,  and  I  will  bring  down  their  nobles,  all  of 
them,  and  the  Chaldeans^  in  the  ships  of  their  exulting.* 
But  it  is  more  than  Babylon  that  is  balanced  against 
them.  /  am  Jehovah,  thy  God,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel, 
thy  Saviour.  I  am  giving  as  thy  ransom,  Egypt,  Cush 
and  Seba  in  exchange  for  thee,  because  thou  art  precious 
in  mine  eyes,  and  hast  made  thyself  valuable  (lit.,  of 
weight);  and  I  have  loved  thee,  therefore  do  I  give  man- 
kind for  thee,  and  peoples  for  thy  life.\  Mankind  for 
thee,  and  peoples  for  thy  life, — all  the  world  for  this 
little  people  ?  It  is  intelligible  only  because  this  little 
people  are  to  be  for  all  the  world.  Ye  are  My  witnesses 
that  I  am  God.  I  will  also  give  thee  for  a  light  to  nations, 
to  be  My  salvation  to  the  end  of  the  earth. 

But  more  than  on  the  Redemption,  which  Israel 
experienced,  our  prophet  dwells  on  the  Revelation,  that 
has  equipped  them  for  their  destiny.  In  a  passage,  in 
ch.  xliii.,  to  which  we  shall  return,  the  present  stupid 
and  unready  character  of  the  mass  of  the  people  is 
contrasted  with  the  instruction  which  God  has  lavished 

*  Ch.  xliii.  14.  t  ^^-  3»  4. 


xU.-xliii.]  ONE   GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE.  247 

upon  them.  Thou  hast  seen  many  things,  and  wilt  not 
observe;  there  is  opening  of  the  ears,  but  he  heareth  not. 
Jehovah  was  pleased  for  His  righteousness^  sake  to  magnify 
the  Instruction  and  make  it  glorious, — but  that — the  result 
and  the  precipitate  of  it  all—  is  a  people  robbed  and  spoiled. 
The  word  Instruction  or  Revelation  is  that  same  technical 
term,  which  we  have  met  with  before,  for  Jehovah's 
special  training  and  illumination  of  Israel.  How  special 
these  were,  how  distinct  from  the  highest  doctrine  and 
practice  of  any  other  nation  in  that  world  to  which 
Israel  belonged,  is  an  historical  fact  that  the  results 
of  recent  research  enable  us  to  state  in  a  few  sentences. 
Recent  exploration  in  the  East,  and  the  progress  of 
Semitic  philology,  have  proved  that  the  system  of  religion, 
which  prevailed  among  the  Hebrews,  had  a  very  great 
deal  in  common  with  the  systems  of  the  neighbouring 
and  related  heathen  nations.  This  common  ekment 
included  not  only  such  things  as  ritual  and  temple- 
furniture,  or  the  details  of  priestly  organization,  but 
even  the  titles  and  many  of  the  attributes  of  God,  and 
especially  the  forms  of  the  covenant  in  which  He  drew 
near  to  men.  But  the  discovery  of  this  common  element 
has  only  thrown  into  more  striking  relief  the  presence 
at  work  in  the  Hebrew  religion  of  an  independent  and 
original  principle.  In  the  Hebrew  religion  historians 
observe  a  principle  of  selection  operating  upon  the 
common  Semitic  materials  for  worship, — ignoring  some 
of  them,  giving  prominence  to  others,  and  with  others 
again  changing  the  reference  and  application.  Grossly 
immoral  practices  are  forbidden  ;  forbidden,  too,  are 
those  superstitions,  which,  like  augury  and  divination, 
draw  men  away  from  single-minded  attention  to  the 
moral  issues  of  life ;  and  even  religious  customs  are 
omitted,  such   as   the   employment  of   women   in  the 


248  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

sanctuary,  which,  however  innocent  in  themselves, 
might  lead  men  into  temptations,  not  desirable  in  con- 
nection with  the  professional  pursuit  of  religion.*  In 
short,  a  stern  and  inexorable  conscience  was  at  work 
in  the  Hebrew  religion,  which  was  not  at  work  in 
any  of  the  religions  most  akin  to  it.  In  our  previous 
volume  we  saw  the  same  conscience  inspiring  the 
prophets.  Prophecy  was  not  confined  to  the  Hebrews; 
it  was  a  general  Semitic  institution  ;  but  no  one  doubts 
the  absolutely  distinct  character  of  the  prophecy,  which 
was  conscious  of  having  the  Spirit  of  Jehovah.  Its 
religious  ideas  were  original,  and  in  it  we  have,  as  all 
admit,  a  moral  phenomenon  unique  in  history.  When 
we  turn  to  ask  the  secret  of  this  distinction,  we  find  the 
answer  in  the  character  of  the  God,  whom  Israel  served. 
The  God  explains  the  people ;  Israel  is  the  response 
to  Jehovah.  Each  of  the  laws  of  the  nation  is  enforced 
by  the  reason.  For  I  am  holy.  Each  of  the  prophets 
brings  his  message  from  a  God,  exalted  in  righteousness. 
In  short,  look  where  you  will  in  the  Old  Testament, — 
come  to  it  as  a  critic  or  as  a  worshipper, — you  dis- 
cover the  revealed  character  of  Jehovah  to  be  the 
effective  principle  at  work.  It  is  this  Divine  character, 
which  draws  Israel  from  among  the  nations  to  their 
destiny,  which  selects  and  builds  the  law  to  be  a  wall 
around  them,  and  which  by  each  revelation  of  itself 
discovers  to  the  people  both  the  measure  of  their 
delinquency  and  the  new  ideals  of  their  service  to 
humanity.  Like  the  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  and  the 
pillar  of  fire  by  night,  we  see  it  in  front  of  Israel  at  every 
stage  of  their  marvellous  progress  down  the  ages. 

So  that  when  Jehovah  says  that  He  has  magnified 

*  Robertson  Smith,  Burnett  Lectures  in  Aberdeen,  1889-90. 


xli.-xliii.]  ONE  GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE.  M9 

the  Revelation  and  made  it  glorious,  He  speaks  of  a 
magnitude  of  a  real,  historical  kind,  that  can  be  tested 
by  exact  methods  of  observation.  Israel's  election  by 
Jehovah,  their  formation,  their  unique  preparation  for 
service,  are  not  the  mere  boasts  of  an  overweening 
patriotism,  but  sober  names  for  historical  processes  as 
real  and  evident  as  any  that  history  contains. 

To  sum  up,  then.  If  Jehovah's  sovereignty  be  abso- 
lute, so  also  is  the  uniqueness  of  Israel's  calling  and 
equipment  for  His  Service.  For,  to  begin  with,  Israel 
had  the  essential  rehgious  temper;  they  enjoyed  a 
unique  moral  instruction  and  discipline;  and  by  the 
side  of  this  they  were  conscious  of  a  series  of  miraculous 
deliverances  from  servitude  and  from  dissolution.  -So 
singular  an  experience  and  career  were  not,  as  we 
have  seen,  bestowed  from  any  arbitrary  motive,  which 
exhausted  itself  upon  Israel,  but  in  accordance  with 
God's  universal  method  of  speciahsation  of  function, 
were  granted  to  fit  the  nation  as  an  instrument  for  a 
practical  end.  The  sovereign  unity  of  God  does  not 
mean  equality  in  His  creation.  The  universe  is  diverse. 
There  is  one  glory  of  the  sun,  and  another  glory  of  the 
moon,  and  another  glory  of  the  stars ;  and  even  so  in  the 
moral  kingdom  of  Him,  who  is  Lord  of  the  Hosts  of 
both  earth  and  heaven,  each  nation  has  its  own  destiny 
and  function.  Israel's  was  religion ;  Israel  was  God's 
speciahst  in  religion. 

For  confirmation  of  this  we  turn  to  the  supreme  wit- 
ness. Jesus  was  born  a  Jew,  He  confined  His  ministry 
to  Judaea,  and  He  has  told  us  why.  By  various  passing 
allusions,  as  well  as  by  dehberate  statements.  He 
revealed  His  sense  of  a  great  religious  difference  be- 
tween Jew  and  Gentile.  Use  not  vain  repetitions  as  the 
Gentiles  do.  ,  ,  ,  For  after  all  these  things  do  the  nations 


2SO  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

of  the  world  seek;  but  your  Father  knoweth  that  you 
have  need  of  these  things.  He  refused  to  work  except 
upon  Jewish  hearts :  /  am  not  sent  but  to  the  lost 
sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel.  And  He  charged  His 
disciples y  sayings  Go  not  into  any  way  of  the  Gentiles,  and 
enter  not  into  any  city  of  the  Samaritans ;  but  go  rather 
to  the  lost  sheep  of  the  House  of  Israel.  And  again  He 
said  to  the  woman  of  Samaria  :  Ye  worship  ye  know 
not  what;  we  know  what  we  worship,  for  salvation  is  of 
the  fews. 

These  sayings  of  our  Lord  have  created  as  much 
question  as  the  pre-eminence  given  in  the  Old  Testament 
to  a  single  people  by  a  God,  who  is  described  as  the  one 
God  of  Heaven  and  earth.  Was  He  narrower  of  heart 
than  Paul,  His  servant,  who  was  debtor  to  Greek  and 
Barbarian  ?  Or  was  He  ignorant  of  the  universal 
character  of  His  mission  till  it  was  forced  upon  His 
reluctant  sympathies  by  the  importunity  of  such  heathen 
as  the  Syrophenician  woman  ?  A  Uttle  common-sense 
dispels  the  perplexity,  and  leaves  the  problem,  over 
which  volumes  have  been  written,  no  problem  at  all. 
Our  Lord  limited  Himself  to  Israel,  not  because  He 
was  narrow,  but  because  He  was  practical;  not  from 
ignorance,  but  from  wisdom.  He  came  from  heaven 
to  sow  the  seed  of  Divine  truth ;  and  where  in  all 
humanity  should  He  find  the  soil  so  ready  as  within 
the  long-chosen  people?  He  knew  of  that  discipline 
of  the  centuries.  In  the  words  of  His  own  parable, 
the  Son  when  He  came  to  earth  directed  His  attention 
not  to  a  piece  of  desert,  but  to  the  vineyard  which  His 
Father's  servants  had  so  long  cultivated,  and  where 
the  soil  was  open.  Jesus  came  to  Israel  because  He 
expected  faith  in  Israel.  That  this  practical  end  was 
the  deliberate  intention  of  His  will,  is  proved  by  the 


xli.-xliii.]  ONE  GOD,    ONE  PEOPLE.  251 

fact  that  when  He  found  faith  elsewhere,  either  in 
Syrian  or  Greek  or  Roman  hearts,  He  did  not  hesitate 
to  let  His  love  and  power  go  forth  to  them. 

In  short,  we  shall  have  no  difficulty  about  these 
Divine  methods  with  a  single,  elect  people,  if  we  only 
remember  that  to  be  Divine  is  to  be  practical.  Yet  God 
also  is  wise,  said  Isaiah  to  the  Jews  when  they  preferred 
their  own  clever  policies  to  Jehovah's  guidance.  And 
we  need  to  be  told  the  same,  who  murmur  that  to 
confine  Himself  to  a  single  nation  was  not  the  ideal 
thing  for  the  One  God  to  do;  or  who  imagine  that 
it  was  left  to  one  of  our  Lord's  own  creatures  to 
suggest  to  Him  the  poHcy  of  His  mission  upon  earth. 
We  are  shortsighted :  and  the  Almighty  is  past  finding 
out.  But  this  at  least  it  is  possible  for  us  to  see, 
that,  in  choosing  one  nation  to  be  His  agent  among 
men,  God  chose  the  type  of  instrument  best  fitted  at 
the  time  for  the  work  for  which  He  designed  it,  and 
that  in  choosing  Israel  to  be  that  nation.  He  chose  a 
people  of  temper  singularly  suitable  to  His  end. 

Israel's  election  as  a  nation,  therefore,  was  to  Service. 
To  be  a  nation  and  to  be  God's  Servant  was  pretty 
much  one  and  the  same  thing  for  Israel.  Israel  were 
to  survive  the  Exile,  because  they  were  to  serve  the 
world.  Let  us  carry  this  over  to  the  study  of  our  next 
chapter — The  Servant  of  Jehovah. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

THE  SERVANT  OF   THE  LORD. 

Isaiah  xli  8-20;    xlii.   1-7,    18  fF  ;    xliii.   5-10;   xlix.    1-9;   1.   4-10; 
Hi.  13-liii. 

WITH  chapter  xlii.  we  reach  a  distinct  stage  in  our 
prophecy.  The  preceding  chapters  have  been 
occupied  with  the  declaration  of  the  great,  basal  truth, 
that  Jehovah  is  the  One  Sovereign  God.  This  has 
been  declared  to  two  classes  of  hearers  in  succession — 
to  God's  own  people,  Israel,  in  ch.  xL,  and  to  the 
heathen  in  ch.  xli.  Having  established  His  sovereignty, 
God  now  publishes  His  will,  again  addressing  these 
two  classes  according  to  the  purpose  which  He  has 
for  each.  Has  He  vindicated  Himself  to  Israel,  the 
Almighty  and  Righteous  God,  Who  will  give  His 
people  freedom  and  strength  :  He  will  now  define  to 
them  the  mission  for  which  that  strength  and  freedom 
are  required.  Has  He  proved  to  the  Gentiles  that  He 
is  the  one  true  God  :  He  will  declare  to  them  now 
what  truth  He  has  for  them  to  learn.  In  short,  to  use 
modern  terms,  the  apologetic  of  chs.  xl.-xli.  is  succeeded 
by  the  missionary  programme  of  ch.  xlii.  And  although, 
from  the  necessities  of  the  case,  we  are  frequently 
brought  back,  in  the  course  of  the  prophecy,  to  its 
fundamental  claims  for  the  Godhead  of  Jehovah,  we 
are  nevertheless  sensible  that  with  ver.   i  of  ch.  xlii. 


xH.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF    THE  LORD.  253 

we  make  a  distinct  advance.  It  is  one  of  those  logical 
steps  which,  along  with  a  certain  chronological  progress 
that  we  have  already  felt,  assures  us  that  Isaiah,  whether 
originally  by  one  or  more  authors,  is  in  its  present 
form  a  unity,  with  a  distinct  order  and  principle  of 
development. 

The  Purpose  of  God  is  identified  with  a  Minister  or 
Servant,  whom  He  commissions  to  carry  it  out  in  the 
world.  This  Servant  is  brought  before  us  with  all  the 
urgency  with  which  Jehovah  has  presented  Himself, 
and  next  to  Jehovah  he  turns  out  to  be  the  most 
important  figure  of  the  prophecy.  Does  the  prophet 
insist  that  God  is  the  only  source  and  sufficiency  of 
His  people's  salvation  :  it  is  with  equal  emphasis  that 
He  introduces  the  Servant  as  God's  indispensable  agent 
in  the  work.  Cyrus  is  also  acknowledged  as  an  elect 
instrument.  But  neither  in  closeness  to  God,  nor  in 
effect  upon  the  world,  is  Cyrus  to  be  compared  for  an 
instant  to  the  Servant.  Cyrus  is  subservient  and 
incidental :  with  the  overthrow  of  Babylon,  for  which 
he  was  raised  up,  he  will  disappear  from  the  stage  of 
our  prophecy.  But  God's  purpose,  which  uses  the  gates*^ 
opened  by  Cyrus,  only  to  pass  through  them  with  the 
redeemed  people  to  the  regeneration  of  the  whole 
world,  is  to  be  carried  to  this  Divine  consummation  by 
the  Servant  :  its  universal  and  glorious  progress  is 
identified  with  his  career.  Cyrus  flashes  through  these_j 
pages  a  well-polished  sword  :  it  is  only  his  swift  and 
brilliant  usefulness  that  is  allowed  to  catch  our  eye. 
But  the  Servant  is  a  Character,  to  delineate  whose 
immortal  beauty  and  example  the  prophet  devotes  as 
much  space  as  he  does  to  Jehovah  Himself.  As  he 
turns  again  and  again  to  speak  of  God's  omnipotence 
^nd    faithfulness  and   agonising  love  for  His  own,  so 


254  '^HE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

with  equal  frequency  and  fondness  dees  he  linger  on 
every  feature  of  the  Servant's  conduct  and  aspect : 
His  gentleness,  His  patience,  His  courage,  His  purity. 
His  meekness  ;  His  daily  wakefulness  to  God's  voice, 
the  swiftness  and  brilliance  of  His  speech  for  others. 
His  silence  under  His  own  torments ;  His  resorts — 
among  the  bruised,  the  prisoners,  the  forwandered 
of  Israel,  the  weary,  and  them  that  sit  in  darkness, 
the  far-off  heathen ;  His  warfare  with  the  world, 
His  face  set  like  a  flint;  His  unworldly  beauty, 
which  men  call  ugliness  ;  His  unnoticed  presence  in 
His  own  generation,  yet  the  effect  of  His  face  upon 
kings  ;  His  habit  of  woe,  a  man  of  sorrows  and  ac- 
quainted with  sickness;  His  sore  stripes  and  bruises. 
His  judicial  murder.  His  felon's  grave  ;  His  exaltation 
and  eternal  glory — till  we  may  reverently  say  that 
these  pictures,  by  their  vividness  and  charm,  have 
drawn  our  eyes  away  from  our  prophet's  visions  of 
God,  and  have  caused  the  chapters  in  which  they 
occur  to  be  oftener  read  among  us,  and  learned  by 
heart,  than  the  chapters  in  which  God  Himself  is  lifted 
up  and  adored.  Jehovah  and  Jehovah's  Servant — 
these  are  the  two  heroes  of  the  drama. 

Now  we  might  naturally  expect  that  so  indispensable 
and  fondly  imagined  a  figure  would  also  be  defined 
past  all  ambiguity,  whether  as  to  His  time  or  person 
or  name.  But  the  opposite  is  the  case.  About  Scrip- 
ture there  are  few  more  intricate  questions  than  those 
on  the  Servant  of  the  Lord.  Is  He  a  Person  or 
Personification  ?  If  the  latter,  is  He  a  Personification 
of  all  Israel  ?  Or  of  a  part  of  Israel  ?  Or  of  the 
ideal  Israel  ?  Or  of  the  Order  of  the  Prophets  ?  Or 
if  a  Person — is  he  the  prophet  himself?  Or  a  martyr 
who  has  already  lived  and  suffered,  like  Jeremiah  ?     Or 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF    THE  LORD.  255 

One  Still  to  come,  like  the  promised  Messiah  ?  Each 
of  these  suggestions  has  not  only  been  made  about  the 
Servant,  but  derives  considerable  support  from  one  or 
another  of  our  prophet's  dissolving  views  of  his  person 
and  work.  A  final  answer  to  them  can  be  given  only 
after  a  comparative  study  of  all  the  relevant  passages  ; 
but  as  these  are  scattered  over  the  prophecy,  and  our 
detailed  exposition  of  them  must  necessarily  be  inter- 
rupted, it  will  be  of  advantage  to  take  here  a  prospect 
of  them  all,  and  see  to  what  they  combine  to  develop 
this  sublime  character  and  mission.  And  after  we 
have  seen  w^hat  the  prophecies  themselves  teach  con- 
cerning the  Servant,  we  shall  inquire  how  they  were 
understood  and  fulfilled  by  the  New  Testament ;  and 
that  will  show  us  how  to  expound  and  apply  them 
with  regard  to  ourselves. 

I. 

The  Hebrew  word  for  Servant  means  a  person  at  the  ' 
disposal  of  another — to  carry  out  his  will,  do  his  work, 
represent  his  interests.  It  was  thus  applied  to  the 
representatives  of  a  king  or  the  worshippers  of  a  god.* 
All  Israelites  were  thus  in  a  sense  the  servants  of 
Jehovah;  though  in  the  singular  the  title  was  reserved 
for  persons  of  extraordinary  character  or  usefulness. 

*  A  king's  courtiers,  soldiers,  or  subjects'are  called  his  servants.  In 
this  sense  Israel  was  often  styled  the  servants  of  Jehovah,  as  in 
Deut.  xxxii.  36 ;  Neh.  i.  10,  where  the  phrase  is  parallel  to  His 
people.  ■  But  Jehovah's  servants  is  a  phrase  also  parallel  to  His  wor- 
shippers (Psalm  cxxxiv.  I,  etc.) ;  to  those  who  trust  Him  (Psalm 
xxxiv.  22) ;  and  to  those  who  love  His  name  (Psalm  Ixix.  36).  The 
term  is  also  applied  in  the  plural  to  the  prophets  (Amos  iii.  7)  ;  and 
in  the  singular,  to  eminent  individuals — such  as  Abraham,  Joshua, 
David  and  Job ;  also  by  Jeremiah  to  the  alien  Nebuchadrezzar,  while 
engaged  on  his  mission  from  God  against  Jerusalem. 


256  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

But  we  have  seen,  as  clearly  as  possible,  that  God 
set  apart  for  His  chief  service  upon  earth,  not  an  indi- 
vidual nor  a  group  of  individuals,  but  a  whole  nation  in 

I  its  national  capacity.  We  have  seen  Israel's  political 
origin  and  preservation  bound  up  with  that  service  ;  we 
have  heard  the  whole  nation  plainly  called,  by  Jeremiah 
and  Ezekiel,  the  Servant  of  Jehovah.*  Nothing  could 
be  more  clear  than  this,  that  in  the  earlier  years  of  the 
Exile  the  Servant  of  Jehovah  was  Israel  as  a  whole, 

i  Israel  as  a  body  politic. 

It  is  also  in  this  sense  that  our  prophet  first  uses 
the  title  in  a  passage  we  have  already  quoted  (xli.  8)  ; 
Thou  Israel,  My  Servant^  Jacob  ivhom  I  have  chosen,  seed 
of  Abraham  My  lover,  whom  I  took  hold  of  from  the  ends 
of  the  earth  and  its  corners  !  I  called  thee  and  said  unto 
thee,  My  Servant  art  thou.  I  have  chosen  thee,  and  not 
cast  thee  away.  Here  the  Servant  is  plainly  the  historical 
nation,  descended  from  Abraham,  and  the  subject  of 
those  national  experiences  which  are  traced  in  the 
previous  chapter.  It  is  the  same  in  the  following 
verses  : — xliv.  i  ff :  Yet  now  hear,  O  Jacob  My  servant ; 
and  Israel,  whom  I  have  chosen :  thus  saith  Jehovah  thy 
Maker,  and  thy  Moulder  from  the  womb,  He  will  help 
thee.  Fear  not,  My  servant  Jacob  ;  and  Jeshurun,  whom 
I  have  chosen.  .  .  .  I  will  pour  My  spirit  upon  thy  seed, 
and  My  blessing  upon  thine  offspring,  xliv.  21  :  Re- 
member these  things,  O  Jacob  ;  and  Israel,  for  My  servant 
art  thou :  I  have  formed  thee ;  a  servant  for  Myself  art 
thou;  O  Israel,  thou  shalt  not  be  forgotten  of  Me. 
xlviii.  20:  Go  ye  forth  from  Babylon;  say  ye,  Jehovah 
hath  redeemed  His  servant  Jacob.  In  all  these  verses, 
which  bind  up  the  nation's  restoration  from  exile  with 


*  See  p..  244. 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  257 

the  fact  that  God  called  it  to  be  His  Servant,  the  title 
Servant  is  plainly  equivalent  to  the  national  name  Israel 
or  Jacob.  But  Israel  or  Jacob  is  not  a  label  for  the 
mere  national  idea,  or  the  bare  political  framework, 
without  regard  to  the  living  individuals  included  in  it. 
To  the  eye  and  heart  of  Him,  Who  counts  the  number 
of  the  stars,  Israel  means  no  mere  outline,  but  all  the. 
individuals  of  the  Hving  generation  of  the  people — thy 
seed,  that  is,  every  born  Israelite,  however  fallen  or 
forwandered.  This  is  made  clear  in  a  very  beautiful 
passage  in  ch.  xliii.  (vv.  1-7)  :  Thus  saith  Jehovah,  thy 
Creator,  O  Jacob ;  thy  Moulder,  O  Israel.  .  .  .  Fear  not,' 
for  I  ant  with  thee;  from  the  sunrise  I  will  bring  thy 
seed,  and  from  the  sunset  will  I  gather  thee ;  .  .  .  My 
sons  from  far,  and  My  daughters  from  the  end  of  the 
earth  ;  every  one  who  is  called  by  My  name,  and  whom  for 
My  glory  I  have  created,  formed,  yea,  I  have  made  him. 
To  this  Israel — Israel  as  a  whole,  yet  no  mere  ab- 
straction or  outline  of  the  nation,  but  the  people  in 
mass  and  bulk— every  individual  of  whom  is  dear  to 
Jehovah,  and  in  some  sense  shares  His  calling  and 
equipment — to  this  Israel  the  title  Servant  of  Jehovah 
is  at  first  applied  by  our  prophet. 

2.  We  say  "  at  first,"  for  very  soon  the  prophet  has 
to  make  a  distinction,  and  to  sketch  the  Servant  as 
something  less  than  the  actual  nation.  The  distinction 
is  obscure;  it  has  given  rise  to  a  very  great  deal  of 
controversy.  But  it  is  so  natural,  where  a  nation  is 
the  subject,  and  of  such  frequent  occurrence  in  other 
literatures,  that  we  may  almost  state  it  as  a  general 
law. 

In  all  the  passages  quoted  above,  Israel  has  been 
spoken  of  in  the  passive  mood,  as  the  object  of  some 
aflection  or  action  on  the  part  of  God :  loved,  formed^ 

VOL.  II.  17 


''^y>. 


258  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

chosen,  called,  and  about  to  be  redeemed  by  Him.  Now, . 
so  long  as  a  people  thus  lie  passive,  their  prophet  will 
naturally  think  of  them  as  a  whole.  In  their  shadow 
his  eye  can  see  them  only  in  the  outHne  of  their  mass ; 
in  their  common  suffering  and  servitude  his  heart  will 
go  out  to  all  their  individ.uals,  as  equally  dear  and 
equally  in  need  of  redemption.  But  when  the  hour 
comes  forJ;_b£..^jQpkL.taavark  QUt.._tlie-ir  own  salvatiimf 
and  they  emerge  into  action,  it  must  needs  be  different. 
When  they  are  no  more  the  object  of  their  prophet's 
affection  only,  but  pass  under  the  test  of  his  experience 
and  judgement,  then  distinctions  naturally  appear 
upon  them.  Lifted  to  the  Hght  of  their  destiny,  their 
inequality  becomes  apparent ;  tried  by_jts  strain,  part 
of  them  break  away.  And  so,  though  the  prophet  con- 
^  tinues  still  to  call  on  the  nation  by  its  name  to  fulfil 
its  calling,  what  he  means  by  that  name  is  no  longer 
the  bulk  and  the  body  of  the  citizenship.  A  certain 
ideal  of  the  people  fills  his  mind's  eye — an  ideal,  how- 
ever, which  is  no  mere  spectre  floating  above  his  own 
generation,  but  is  realised  in  their  noble  and  aspiring 
portion — although  his  ignorance  as  to  the  exact  size 
of  this  portion,  must  always  leave  his  image  of  them 
more  or  less  ideal  to  his  eyes.  It  will  be  their  quality 
rather  than  their  quantity  that  is  clear  to  him.  In 
modern  history  we  have  two  familiar  illustrations  of  this 
process  of  winnowing  and  idealising  a  people  in  the 
light  of  their  destiny,  which  may  prepare  us  for  the 
more  obscure  instance  of  it  in  our  prophecy. 

In  a  well-known  passage  in  the  Areopagitica,  Milton 
exclaims,  "  Methinks  I  see  in  my  mind  a  noble  and 
puissant  nation  rousing  herself  and  shaking  her  invin- 
cible locks  ;  methinks  I  see  her  as  an  eagle  mewing  her 
mighty  youth,  and  kindling  her  andazzled  eyes  at  the 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  259 

full  midday  beam,  .  .  .  while  the  whole  noise  of  timor- 
ous and  flocking  birds,  with  those  also  that  love  the 
twilight,  flutter  about,  amazed  at  what  she  means."  In 
this  passage  the  "nation"  is  no  longer  what  Milton  meant 
by  the  term  in  the  earlier  part  of  his  treatise,  where 
'*  England"  stands  simply  for  the  outline  of  the  whole 
English  people;  but  the  "nation  "  is  the  true  genius  of 
England  reahsed  in  her  enlightened  and  aspiring  sons, 
and  breaking  away  from  the  hindering  and  debasing 
members  of  the  body  politic — "  the  timorous  and  flock- 
ing birds  with  those  also  that  love  the  twilight " — who 
are  indeed  Englishmen  after  the  flesh,  but  form  no  part 
of  the  nation's  better  self 

Or,  recall  Mazzini's  bitter  experience.  To  no  man 
was  his  Italy  more  really  one  than  to  this  ardent  son 
of  hers,  who  loved  every  born  Italian  because  he  was 
an  Italian,  and  counted  none  of  the  fragments  of  his 
unhappy  country  too  petty  or  too  corrupt  to  be  included 
in  the  hope  of  her  restoration.  To  Mazzini's  earliest 
imagination,  it  was  the  whole  Italian  seed,  who  were 
ready  for  redemption,  and  would  rise  to  achieve  it  at 
his  summons.  But  when  his  summons  came,  how  few 
responded,  and  after  the  first  struggles  how  fewer  still 
remained, — Mazzini  himself  has  told  us  with  break- 
ing heart.  The  real  Italy  was  but  a  handful  of  born  | 
Italians ;  at  times  it  seemed  to  shrink  to  the  prophet 
alone.  From  such  a  core  the  conscience  indeed  spread 
again,  till  the  entire  people  was  delivered  from  tyranny 
and  from  schism,  and  now  every  peasant  and  burgher 
from  the  Alps  to  Sicily  understands  what  Italy  means, 
and  is  proud  to  be  an  Italian.  But  for  a  time  MazziniJ 
and  his  few  comrades  stood  alone.  Others  of  their 
blood  and  speech  were  Piedmontese,  Pope's  men,  Nea- 
politans, —  merchants,   lawyers,  scholars,  —  or  merely 


26o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

selfish  and  sensual.     They  alone  were  Italians  ;  they 
alone  were  Italy. 

It  is  a  similar  winnowing  process,  through  which  we 
see  our  prophet's  thoughts  pass  with  regard  to  Israel. 
Y^Him,  too,  experience  teaches  that  the  7nany  are  called^ 
'  but  the  feiv  fhosen.  So  long  as  his  people  lie  in  the 
shadow  of  captivity,  so  long  as  he  has  to  speak  of 
them  in  the  passive  mood,  the  object  of  God's  call 
and  preparation,  it  is  their  seed,  the  born  people  in  bulk 
and  mass,  whom  he  names  Israel,  and  entitles  the 
[^Servant  of  Jehovah.  But  the  moment  that  he  lifts 
them  to  their  mission  in  the  world,  and  to  the  light 
of  their  destiny,  a  difference  becomes  apparent  upon 
them,  and  the  Servant  of  Jehovah,  though  still  called 
Israel,  shrinks  to  something  less  than  the  living  gene- 
ration, draws  off  to  something  finer  than  the  mass  of 
the  people.  Hov/,  indeed,  could  it  be  otherwise  with 
this  strange  people,  than  which  no  nation  on  earth  had 
a  loftier  ideal  identified  with  its  history,  or  more  fre- 
quently turned  upon  its  better  self,  with  a  sword  in 
its  hand.  Israel,  though  created  a  nation  by  God  for 
His  service,  was  always  what  Paul  found  it,  divided 
into  an  Israel  after  the  flesh,  and  an  Israel  after  the 
spirit.  But  it  was  in  the  Exile  that  this  distinction 
gaped  most  broad.  With  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  the 
political  framework,  which  kept  the  different  elements 
of  the  nation  together,  was  shattered,  and  these  were 
left  loose  to  the  action  of  moral  forces.  The  baser 
elements  were  quickly  absorbed  by  heathendom ;  the 
nobler,  that  remained  loyal  to  the  divine  call,  were 
free  to  assume  a  new  and  ideal  form.  Every  year 
spent  in  Babylonia  made  it  more  apparent  that  the 
true  and  effective  Israel  of  the  future  would  not  coin- 
cide with  all  the  seed  of  Jacob,  who  went  into  exile. 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  261 

Numbers  of  the  latter  were  as  contented  with  their 
Babylonian  circumstance  as  numbers  of  Mazzini's 
*' Italians"  were  satisfied  to  live  on  as  Austrian  and 
Papal  subjects.  Many,  as  we  have  seen,  becamej 
idolaters ;  many  more  settled  down  into  the  prosperous 
habits  of  Babylonian  commerce,  while  a  large  multitude 
besides  were  scattered  far  out  of  sight  across  the  world. 
It  required  little  insight  to  perceive  that  the  true, 
effective  Israel — the  real  Sei^  ant  of  Jehovah — must  needs 
be  a  much  smaller  body  than  the  sum  of  all  these  :  a 
loyal  kernel  within  Israel,  who  were  still  conscious  of 
the  national  calling,  and  capable  of  carrying  it  out ; 
who  stood  sensible  of  their  duty  to  the  whole  world, 
but  whose  first  conscience  was  for  their  lapsed  and  lost 
countrymen.  UbisJ^rael^within  Israel  was  the  realJ 
Seruaiit  of  the^  Lord ;  to  personify  it  in  that  character — 
however  vague  might  be  the  actual  proportion  it  would 
assume  in  his  own  or  in  any  other  generation — would 
be  as  natural  to  our  dramatic  prophet  as  to  personify 
the  nation  as  a  whole. 

All  this  very  natural  process — this  passing  from  the 
historical  Israel,  the  nation  originally  designed  by  God 
to  be  His  Servant,  to  the  conscious  and  effective  Israel, 
that  uncertain  quantity  within  the  present  and  every 
future  generation — takes  place  in  the  chapters  before 
us ;  and  it  will  be  sufficiently  easy  for  us  to  follow  if 
we  only  remember  that  our  prophet  is  not  a  dogmatic 
theologian,  careful  to  make  clear  each  logical  distinction, 
but  a  dramatic  poet,  who  delivers  his  ideas  in  groups, 
tableaux,  dialogues,  interrupted  by  choruses ;  and  who 
writes  in  a  language  incapable  of  expressing  such  delicate 
difi'erences,  except  by  dramatic  contrasts,  and  by  the 
one  other  figure  of  which  he  is  so  fond — paradox. 

Perhaps  the  first  traces  of  distinction  between  the 


262  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

real  Servant  and  the  whole  nation  are  to  be  found  in 
the  Programme  of  his  Mission  in  ch.  xlii.  1-7.  There 
it  is  said  that  the  Servant  is  to  be  for  a  covenant  of  the 
people  (ver.  6).  I  have  explained  below  why  we  are  to 
understand  people  as  here  meaning  Israel.*  And  in 
ver.  7  it  is  said  of  the  Servant  that  he  is  to  open  blind 
eyes,  bring  forth  from  prison  the  captive,  from  the  house 
of  bondage  dwellers  in  darkness :  phrases  that  are  de- 
scriptive, of  course,  of  the  captive  Israel.  Already, 
then,  in  ch.  xlii.  the  Servant  is  something  distinct 
from  the  whole  nation,  whose  Covenant  and  Redeemer 
he  is  to  be. 

The  next  references  to  the  Servant  are  a  couple  of 
paradoxes,  which  are  evidently  the  prophet's  attempt  to 
show  why  it  was  necessary  to  draw  in  the  Servant  of 
Jehovah  from  the  whole  to  a  part  of  the  people.  The 
first  of  these  paradoxes  is  in  ch.  xHi.  ver.  18. 

Ye  deaf,  hearken  !  and  ye  blind,  look  ye  to  see  ! 

Who  is  blind  bid  My  Servant,  and  deaf  as  My  Messenger 

whom  /  send  ? 
Who  is  blind  as  Meslmllam,  and  blind  as  the  Set^oant  of 

Jehovah  ? 

*  The  definite  article  is  not  used  here  with  the  word  people,  and 
hence  the  phrase  has  been  taken  by  some  in  the  vaguer  sense  of  a 
people's  covenant,  as  a  general  expression,  along  with  its  parallel  clause, 
of  the  kind  of  influence  the  Servant  was  to  exert,  not  on  Israel,  but 
on  any  people  in  the  world  ;  he  was  to  be  a  people's  covenant,  and  a 
light  fornations.  So  practically  Schultz,  A.  T.  Theologie,  4th  ed.,  p.  284 
But  the  Hebrew  word  for  people  UV  is  often  used  without  the  article 
to  express  the  people  Israel,  just  as  the  Hebrew  word  for  land  "['"IX  is 
often  used  without  the  article  to  express  the  land  of  Judah.  (|*1Nn 
with  the  article,  is  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  the  Earth).  And  in  ch.  xlix. 
the  phrase  a  covenant  of  the  people  again  occurs,  and  in  a  context  in 
which  it  can  only  mean  a  covenant  of  the  people,  Israel.  Some  render 
Dl^  nni  a  covenant  people.  But  in  xlix.  8  this  is  plainly  an  impossible 
rendering. 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD,  263 

Vision  of  many  things — and  thou  dost  not  observe, 
Opening  of  ears  and  he  hears  not ! 

The  context  shows  that  the  Servant  here — or  Me- 
shullam,  as  he  is  called,  the  devoted  or  submissive  one, 
from  the  same  root,  and  of  much  the  same  form  as  the 
Arabic  Muslim  * — is  the  whole  people ;  -but  they  ^re 
entitled  ^^^rvant  onLyL-in.  order,  to  show  how  unfit  th^ 
are  for  the  task  to  which  they  have  been  designated, 
and  what  a  paradox  their  title  is  beside  their  real 
character.  God  had  given  them  every  opportunity  by 
making  great  His  instruction  (ver.  21,  cf.  p.  247),  and, 
when  that  failed,  by  His  sore  discipline  in  exile  (vers. 
24,  25).  For  who  gave  facob  for  spoil  and  Israel  to 
the  robbers  ?  Did  not  fehovah  ?  He  against  ivhom  we 
sinned y  and  they  woidd  not  walk  in  His  ways,  neither  were 
obedient  to  His  instruction.  So  He  poured  upon  him  the 
fury  of  His  anger  and  the  force  of  war.  But  even  this 
did  not  awake  the  dull  nation.  Though  it  set  him  on 
fire  round  about,  yet  he  knew  not;  and  it  kindled  upon  him, 
yet  he  laid  it  not  to  heart.  The  nation  as  a  whole  had 
been  favoured  with  God's  revelation ;  as  a  whole  they 
had  been  brought  into  His  purifying  furnace  of  the 
Exile.  But  as  they  have  benefited  by  neither  the  one ' 
nor  the  other,  the  natural  conclusion  is  that  as  a  whole 
they  are  no  more  fit  to  be  God's  Servant.  Such  is  the 
hint  which  this  paradox  is  intended  to  give  us.  _J 

But  a  little  further  on  there  is  an  obverse  paradox, 
which  plainly  says,  that  although  the  people  are  blind 
and  deaf  as  a  whole,  still  the^  capacity_foiL„aervice^is- 
tJQiind-ajMonglhem  alone  (xliii.  8,  10). 


*  Meshullam  is  found  as  a  proper  name  in  the  historical  books  of 
the  Old  Testament,  especially  Nehemiah,  e.g.,  iii.  4,  6,  30. 


264  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Bring  forth  the  blind  people — yet  eyes  are  there  ! 
And  the  deaf  yet  ears  have  they  /  .  .   . 
Ye  are  My  witnesses,  saith  Jehovah,  and  My  Servant  whom 
I  have  chosen. 

The  preceding  verses  (vv.  1-7)  show  us  that  it  is 
again  the  whole  people,  in  their  bulk  and  scattered 
fragments,  who  are  referred  to.  Blind  though  they  be, 
yet  are  there  eyes  among  them  ;  deaf  though  they  be,  yet 
they  have  ears.  And  so  Jehovah  addresses  them  all,  in 
contradistinction  to  the  heathen  peoples  (ver.  9),  as  His 
Servant. 

These  two  complementary  paradoxes  together  show 
this  :  that  while  Israel  as  a  whole  is  unfit  to  be  the 
Servant,  it  is  nevertheless  within  Israel,  alone  of  all  the 
world's  nations,  that  the  true  capacities  for  service  are 
found — eyes  are  there,  ears  have  they.  They  prepare  us 
for  the  Servant's  testimony  about  himself,  in  which, 
while  he  owns  himself  to  be  distinct  from  Israel  as  a 
whole,  he  is  nevertheless  still  called  Israel.  This  is 
given  in  ch.  xlix.  And  He  said  unto  me,  My  Servant 
art  thou  ;  Israel,  in  whom  I  will  glorify  Myself.  And  now 
saith  Jehovah,  my  moulder  from  the  womb  to  be  a  Servant 
unto  Him,  to  turn  again  Jacob  to  Him,  and  that  Israel 
might  not  be  destroyed;  and  I  am  of  value  in  the  eyes 
of  Jehovah,  and  my  God  is  my  strength.  And  He  said, 
It  is  too  light  for  thy  being  My  Servant,  merely  to  raise 
up  the  tribes  of  Jacob,  and  to  restore  the  preserved  of 
Israel ;  I  will  also  set  thee  for  a  light  of  nations,  to  be  My 
salvation  to  the  end  of  the  earth  (xlix.  y6).  Here  the 
Servant,  though  still  called  Israel,  is  clearly  distinctii:©«i 
thje_nation  as  a  whole,  for  part  of  his  work  is  to^-raise^ 
the  nation  up  again.  And,  moreover,  he  tells  us  this 
as  his  own  testimony  about  himself.     He  is  no  longer 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  265 

spoken  of  in  the  third  person,  he  speaks  for  himself  in 
thejirst,  This  is  significant.  It  is  more  than  a  mere 
artistic  figure,  the  effect  of  our  prophet's  dramatic 
style — as  if  the  Servant  now  stood  opposite  him,  so 
vivid  and  near  that  he  heard  him  speak,  and  quoted  him 
in  the  direct  form  of  speech.  It  is  more  probably  the^ 
result  of  moral  sympathy :  the  prophet  speaks  out  of 
the  heart  of  the  Servant,  in  the  name  of  that  better 
portion  of  Israel  which  was  already  conscious  of  the 
Divine  call,  and  of  its  distinction  in  this  respect  from 
the  mass  of  the  people.  ^ 

It  is  futile  to  inquire  what  this  better  portion  of 
Israel  actually  was,  for  whom  the  prophet  speaks  in  the 
first  person.  Some  have  argued,  from  the  stress  which 
the  speaker  lays  upon  his  gifts  of  speech  and  office  of 
preaching,  that  what  is  now  signified  by  the  Servant  is 
the  order  of  the  prophets  ;  but  such  forget  that  in  these 
chapters  the  proclamation  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  is  the 
ideal,  not  of  prophets  only,  but  of  the  whole  people. 
Zion  as  a  whole  is  to  be  heraldess  of  good  news  (xl.  9). 
It  is,  therefore,  not  the  official  function  of  the  prophet- 
order  which  the  Servant  here  owns,  but  the  ideal  of 
the  prophet-nation.  Others  have  argued  from  the 
direct  form  of  speech,  that  the  prophet  puts  himself 
forward  as  the  Servant.  But  no  individual  would  call 
himself  Israel.  And  as  Professor  Cheyne  remarks,  the) 
passage  is  altogether  too  self-assertive  to  be  spoken  by 
any  man  of  himself  as  an  individual ;  although,  of 
course,  our  prophet  could  not  have  spoken  of  the  true 
Israel  with  such  sympathy,  unless  he  had  himself  been 
part  of  it.  The  writer  of  these  verses  may  have  been^ 
for  the.  time,  as  virtually  the  real  Israel  as  Mazzini 
was  the  real  Italy.  But  still  he  does  not  speak  as 
an  individual.     The  passage  is  manifestly  a  piece  of 


266  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

personification.  The  Servant  is  Israel — not  now  the 
nation  as  a  whole,  not  the  body  and  bulk  of  the 
Israelites,  for  they  are  to  be  the  object  of  his  first 
efforts,  but  the  loyal,  conscious  and  effective  Israel, 
reahsed  in  some  of  her  members,  and  here  personified 
by  our  prophet,  who  himself  speaks  for  her  out  of  his 

^  heart,  in  the  first  person. 

By  ch.  xlix.,  then,  the  Servant  of  Jehovah  is  a 
personification  of  the  true,  effective  Israel  as  distin- 
guished from  the  mass  of  the  nation — a  Personification, 

^but  not  yet  a  Person.  Something  within  Israel  has 
wakened  up  to  find  itselt  conscious  of  being  the  Servant 
of  Jehovah,  and  distinct  from  the  mass  of  the  nation — 
something  that  is  not  yet  a  Person.  And  this  defini- 
tion of  the  Servant  m.ay  stand_(^dth^sQrae  modifications) 
for  his  next  appearance  in  ch.  j^_4-p>^  In  this  passage 
the  Servant,  still  speaking  in  the  first  person,  continues 
to  illustrate  his  experience  as  a  prophet,  and  carries  it  to 
its  consequence  in  martyrdom.  But  let  us  notice  that 
he  now  no  longer  calls  himself  Israel,  and  that  if  it 
were  not  for  the  previous  passages  it  would  be  natural 
to  suppose  that  an  individual  was  speaking.  This 
supposition  is  confirmed  by  a  verse  that  follows  the 
Servant's  speech,  and  is  spoken,  as  chorus,  by  the 
Prophet  himself  Who  among  you  is  a  fearer  of 
fehovahj  obedient  to  the  voice  of  His  Servant,  who  walketh 
in  darkness,  and  hath  no  light.  Let  him  trust  in  the 
name  of  fchovah,  and  stay  himself  upon  his  God.  Iix 
Jthis  too  much  neglected  verse,  which  fornis^  a  real — 
transition  to  ch.  lii.  13-liii.,  the  prophet  is  addressiog— 
any  individual  Israelite,  on  behalf  of  a  personal  God,— 
It  is  very  difficult  to  refrain  from  concluding  that  there- 
fore the  Servant  also  is  a  Person.  Let  us,  however,  not 
go  beyond  what  we  have  evidence  for ;  and  note  only 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  267 

that  in  ch.  1.  the  Servant  is  no  more  called  Israel,  and  is 
represented  not  as  if  he  were  one  part  of  the  nation, 
over  against  the  mass  of  it,  but  as  if  he  were  one 
individual  over  against  other  individuals  ;  ^thatin_fi.ne 
Jbhe  Personification  of  ch.  xlix.  has  become  much  more 
difficult  to  distinguish  from  an  actual  Person. 

3.  This  brings  us  to  the  culminating  passage — 
ch.  Hi.  13-Hii.  Is  the  Servant  still  a  Personification 
here,  or  at  last  and  unmistakably  a  Person  ? 
C  It  may  relieve  the  air  of  that  electricity,  which  is  apt 
to  charge  it  at  the  discussion  of  so  classic  a  passage  as 
this,  and  secure  us  calm  weather  in  which  to  examine 
exegetical  details,  if  we  at  once  assert,  what  none 
but  prejudiced  Jews  have  ever  denied,  that  this  great 
prophecy,  known  as  the  fifty-third  of  Isaiah,  was 
fulfilled  in  One  Person,  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  achieved 
in  all  its  details  by  Him  alone.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  requires  also  to  be  pointed  out  that  Christ's  personal 
fulfilmicnt  of  it  does  not  necessarily  imply  that  our 
prophet  wrote  it  of  a  Person.  The  present  expositor 
hopes,  indeed,  tobeab]e_to  jgiye  strong  reasons  for 
the^  theory  usual  among  us,  that  the  Personification  of 
previous  passages  is  at  last  in  ch.  liii.  presented  as  a 
Person.  But  he  fails  to  understand,  why  critics  should 
be  regarded  as  unorthodox  or  at  variance  with  New 
Testament  teaching  on  the  subject,  who,  while  they 
acknowledge  that  only  Christ  fulfilled  ch.  liii.,  are  yet 
unable  to  believe  that  the  prophet  looked  upon  the 
Servant  as  an  individual,  and  who  regard  ch.  liii.  as 
simply  a  sublimer  form  of  the  prophet's  previous  pictures 
of  the  ideal  people  of  God.  Surely  Christ  could  and 
did  fulfil  prophecies  other  than  personal  ones.  The 
types  of  Him,  which  the  New  Testament  quotes  from 
the   Old   Testament,   are   not   exclusively  individuals. 


268  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

Christ  is  sometimes  represented  as  realising  in  His 
Person  and  work  statements,  which,  as  they  were  first 
spoken,  could  only  refer  to  Israel,  the  nation.  Matthew, 
for  instance,  applies  to  Jesus  a  text  which  Hosea  wrote 
primarily  of  the  whole  Jewish  people  :  Out  of  Egypt 
have  I  called  My  Son*  Or,  to  take  an  instance  from 
our  own  prophet — who  but  Jesus  fulfilled  ch.  xHx., 
in  which,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  not  an  individual,  but 
the  ideal  of  the  prophet  people,  that  is  figured  ?  So 
that,  even  if  it  were  proved  past  all  doubt — proved 
from  grammar,  context,  and  every  prophetic  analogy — 
that  in  writing  ch.  liii.  our  prophet  had  still  in  view 
that  aspect  of  the  nation  which  he  has  personified 
in  ch.  xlix.,  such  a  conclusion  would  not  weaken  the 
connection  between  the  prophecy  and  its  unquestioned 
fulfilment  by  Jesus  Christ,  nor  render  the  two  less 
evidently  part  of  one  Divine  design. 

But  we  are  by  no  means  compelled  to  adopt  the 
impersonal  view  of  ch.  hii.  On  the  contrary,  while 
the  question  is  one,  to  which  all  experts  know  the 
difficulty  of  finding  an  absolutely  conclusive  answer 
one  way  or  the  other,  it  seems  to  me  that  reasons 
prevail,  which  make  for  the  personal  interpretation. 

Let  us  see  what  exactly  are  the  objections  to  taking 
ch.  Hi.  13-liii.  in  a  personal  sense.  First,  it  is  very 
important  to  observe,  that  they  do  not  rise  out  of  the 
grammar  or  language  of  the  passage.  The  reference  of 
both  of  these  is  consistently  individual.  Throughout, 
the  Servant  is  spoken  of  in  the  singular.f     The  name 

*  Hosea  xi.  I  ;  Matt.  ii.  15. 

f  Of  all  the  expressions  used  of  him  the  only  one  which  shows 
a  real  tendency  to  a  plural  reference  is  in  his  deaths  (ver.  9),  and 
even  it  (if  it  is  the  correct  reading)  is  quite  capable  of  application  to 
an  individual  who  suftered  such  manifold  martyrdom  as  is  set  forth 
in  the  passage. 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  269 

Israel  is  not  once  applied  to  him  :  nothing — except  that 
the  nation  has  also  suffered — suggests  that  he  is  play- 
ing a  national  role ;  there  is  no  reflection  in  his  fate  of 
the  features  of  the  Exile.  The  antithesis,  which  was 
evident  in  previous  passages,  between  a  better  Israel  and 
the  mass  of  the  people  has  disappeared.  The  Servant 
is  contrasted,  not  with  the  nation  as  a  whole,  but  with 
His  people  as  individuals.  All  we  like  sheep  have  gone 
astray;  we  have  turned  every  one  to  his  own  way ;  and  the 
Lord  hath  laid  on  him  the  iniquity  of  us  all.  As  far  as 
grammar  can,  this  surely  distinguishes  a  single  person. 
It  is  true,  that  one  or  two  phrases  suggest  so  colossal 
a  figure — he  shall  startle  many  nations,  and  kings  shall 
shut  their  mouths  at  him — that  for  a  moment  we  think 
of  the  spectacle  of  a  people  rather  than  of  a  solitary 
human  presence.  But  even  such  descriptions  are  not 
incompatible  with  a  single  person.*  On  the  other 
hand,  there  are  phrases  which  we  can  scarcely  think  are 
used  of  any  but  a  historical  individual ;  such  as  that  he 
was  taken  from  oppression  and  judgement,  that  is  from 
a  process  of  law  which  was  tyranny,  from  a  judicial 
murder,  and  that  he  belonged  to  a  particular  generation — 
As  for  his  generation,  who  considered  that  he  was  cut  off 
out  of  the  land  of  the  living.  Surely  a  historical  indi- 
vidual is  the  natural  meaning  of  these  words.  And,  in 
fact,  critics  like  Ewald  and  Wellhausen,  who  interpret 
the  passage,  in  its  present  context,  of  the  ideal  Israel, 
find  themselves  forced  to  argue,  that  it  has  been 
borrowed  for  this  use  from  the  older  story  of  some 
actual  martyr — so  individual  do  its  references  seem  to 
them  throughout. 

*  Not  one  word  in  them  betrays  any  sense  of  a  body  of  men  or  an 
ideal  people  standing  behind  them,  which  sense  surely  some  expression 
would  have  betrayed,  if  it  had  been  in  the  prophet's  mind. 


2'fo  TliE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

If,  then,  the  grammar  and  language  of  the  passage 
thus  conspire  to  convey  the  impression  of  an  individual, 
what  are  the  objections  to  supposing  that  an  individual 
is  meant  ?  Critics  have  felt,  in  the  main,  three  ob- 
jections to  the  discovery  of  a  historical  individual  in 
Isa.  lii.  13-liii. 

The  first  of  these  that  we  take  is  chronological,  and 
arises  from  the  late  date  to  which  we  have  found  it 
necessary  to  assign  the  prophecy.  Our  prophet,  it  is 
averred,  associates  the  work  of  the  Servant  with  the 
restoration  of  the  people ;  but  he  sees  that  restoration 
too  close  to  him  to  be  able  to  think  of  the  appearance, 
ministry  and  martyrdom  of  a  real  historic  life  happen- 
ing before  it.  (Our  prophet,  it  will  be  remembered, 
wrote  about  546,  and  the  Restoration  came  in  538.) 
"There  is  no  room  for  a  history  like  that  of  the 
suffering  Servant  between  the  prophet's  place  and  the 
Restoration."  * 

Now,  this  objection  might  be  turned,  even  if  it  were 
true  that  the  prophet  identified  the  suffering  Servant's 
career  with  so  immediate  and  so  short  a  process  as  the 
political  deliverance  from  Babylonf.  For,  in  that  case, 
the  prophet  would  not  be  leaving  less  room  for  the  Ser- 
vant, than,  in  ch.  ix.,  Isaiah  himself  leaves  for  the  birth, 
the  growth  to  manhood,  and  the  victories  of  the  Prince- 
of-the- Four- Names,  before  that  immediate  relief  from 
the  Assyrian,  which  he  expects  the  Prince  to  effect. 
But  does  our  prophet  identify  the  suffering  Servant's 
career  with  the  redemption  from  Babylon  and  the 
Return  ?  It  is  plain  that  he  does  not — at  least  in  those 
portraits  of  the  Servant,  which  are  most  personal.    Our 

*  A.  B.  D.,  in  a  review  of  the  last  edition  of  Delitzsch's  Isotah,  in 
the  Theol.  Review,  iv.,  p.  276. 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  271 

prophet  has  really  two  prospects  for  Israel — one,  the 
actual  deliverance  from  Babylon ;  the  other,  a  spiritual 
redemption  and  restoration.  If,  like  his  fellow  prophets, 
he  sometimes  runs  these  two  together,  and  talks  of  the 
latter  in  the  terms  of  the  former,  he  keeps  them  on  the 
whole  distinct,  and  assigns  them  to  different  agents. 
The  burden  of  the  first  he  lays  on  Cyrus,  though  he 
also  connects  it  with  the  Servant,  while  the  Servant  is 
still  to  him  an  aspect  of  the  nation  (see  xlix.  8«,  gb).  It 
is  temporary,  and  soon  passes  from  his  thoughts,  Cyrus 
being  dropped  with  it.  But  the  other,  the  spiritual 
redemption,  is  confined  to  no  limits  of  time;  and  it 
is  with  its  process — indefinite  in  date  and  in  length  of 
period — that  he  associates  the  most  personal  portraits 
of  the  Servant  (ch.  1.  and  lii.  13-liii.).  In  these  the 
Servant,  now  spoken  of  as  an  individual,  has  nothing 
to  do  with  that  temporary  work  of  freeing  the  people 
from  Babylon,  which  was  over  in  a  year  or  two,  and 
which  seems  to  be  now  behind  the  prophet's  standpoint. 
His  is  the  enduring  office  of  prophecy,  sympathy,  and 
expiation — an  office  in  which  there  is  all  possible  "room" 
for  such  a  historical  career  as  is  sketched  for  him.  His 
relation  to  Cyrus,  before  whose  departure  from  connec- 
tion with  Israel's  fate  the  Servant  does  not  appear  as  a 
person,  is  thus  most  interesting.  Perhaps  we  may  best 
convey  it  in  a  homely  figure.  On  the  ship  of  Israel's 
fortunes — as  on  every  ship  and  on  every  voyage — the 
prophet  sees  two  personages.  One  is  the  Pilot  through 
the  shallows,  Cyrus,  who  is  dropped  as  soon  as  the 
shallows  are  past ;  and  the  other  is  the  Captain  of  the 
ship,  who  remains  always  identified  with  it — the  Servant. 
The  Captain  does  not  come  to  the  front  till  the  Pilot  has 
gone  ;  but,  both  alongside  the  Pilot,  and  after  the  Pilot 
has  been  dropped,  there  is  every  room  for  his  office. 


272  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

The  second  main  objection  to  identifying  an  indivi- 
dual in  ch.  lii.  13-liii.  is,  that  an  individual  with  such 
features  has  no  analogy  in  Hebrew  prophecy.  It  is 
said  that,  neither  in  his  humiliation,  nor  in  the  kind  of 
exaltation,  which  is  ascribed  to  him,  is  there  his  like  in 
any  other  individual  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  cer- 
tainly not  in  the  Messiah.  Elsewhere  in  Scripture  (it 
is  averred)  the  Messiah  reigns,  and  is  glorious  ;  it  is 
the  people  who  suffer,  and  come  through  suffering  to 
power.  Nor  is  the  Messiah's  royal  splendour  at  all 
the  same  as  the  very  vague  influence,  evidently  of  a 
spiritual  kind,  which  is  attributed  to  the  Servant  in  the 
end  of  ch.  liii.  The  Messiah  is  endowed  with  the  mihtary 
and  political  virtues.  He  is  a  warrior,  a  king,  a  judge. 
He  sits  on  the  throne  of  Davidy  He  establishes  David^s 
kingdom.  He  smites  the  land  with  the  rod  of  His  mouthy 
and  with  the  breath  of  His  lips  He  slays  the  wicked.  But 
very  different  phrases  are  used  of  the  Servant.  He  is 
not  called  king,  though  kings  shut  their  mouths  at  him, 
— he  is  a  prophet  and  a  martyr,  and  an  expiation  ;  and 
the  phrases,  I  will  divide  him  a  portion  with  the  great,  and 
he  shall  divide  the  spoil  with  the  strong,  are  simply  meta- 
phors of  the  immense  spiritual  success  and  influence 
with  which  His  self-sacrifice  shall  be  rewarded  ;  as  a 
spiritual  power  He  shall  take  His  place  among  the 
dominions  and  forces  of  the  world.  This  is  a  true 
prophecy  of  what  Israel,  that  worm  of  a  people,  should 
be  lifted  to ;  but  it  is  quite  different  from  the  pohtical 
throne,  from  which  Isaiah  had  promised  that  the 
Messiah  should  sway  the  destinies  of  Israel  and 
mankind. 

But,  in  answer  to  this  objection  to  finding  the 
Messiah,  or  any  other  influential  individual,  in  ch.  liii., 
we  may  remember  that  there  were  already  traces  in 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  273 

^  Hebrew  prophecy  of  a  suffering  Messiah  :  we  come 
across  them  in  ch.  vii.  There  Isaiah  presents  Im- 
manuel,  whom  we  identified  with  the  Prince-of-the- 
Four-Names  in  ch.  ix.,  as  at  first  nothing  but  a  sufferer 
— a  sufferer  from  the  sins  of  His  predecessors.*  And, 
even  though  we  are  wrong  in  taking  the  suffering 
Immanuel  for  the  Messiah,  and  though  Isaiah  meant  him 
only  as  a  personification  of  Israel  suffering  for  the  error 
of  Ahaz,  had  not  the  two  hundred  years,  which  elapsed 
between  Isaiah's  prophecy  of  Israel's  glorious  Deliverer, 
been  full  of  room  enough,  and,  what  is  more,  of  experi- 
ence enough,  for  the  ideal  champion  of  the  people  to  be 
changed  to  something  more  spiritual  in  character  and 
in  work  ?  Had  the  nation  been  baptized,  for  most  of 
those  two  centuries,  in  vain,  in  the  meaning  of  suffering, 
and  in  vain  had  they  seen  exemplified  in  their  noblest 
spirits  the  fruits  and  glory  of  self-sacrifice  ?  t  The 
type  of  Hero  had  changed  in  Israel  since  Isaiah  wrote 
of  his  Prince-of-the- Four-Names.  The  king  had  been 
replaced  by  the  prophet ;  the  conqueror  by  the  martyr ; 
the  judge  who  smote  the  land  by  the  rod  of  his  mouth, 
and  slew  the  wicked  by  the  breath  of  his  Hps, — by 
the  patriot  who  took  his  country's  sins  upon  his  own 
conscience.  The  monarchy  had  perished  ;  men  knew 
that,  even  if  Israel  were  set  upon  their  own  land  again, 
it  would  not  be  under  an  independent  king  of  their  own; 
nor  was  a  Jewish  champion  of  the  martial  kind,  such  as 
Isaiah  had  promised  for  deHverance  from  the  Assyrian, 
any  more  required.  Cyrus,  the  Gentile,  should  do  all 
the  campaigning  required  against  Israel's  enemies,  and 
Israel's  native  Saviour  be  relieved  for  gentler  methods 
and  more  spiritual  aims.     It  is  all  this  experience,  of 

*  Isaiah  I.  i.-xxxix.,  pp.  134,  135.  f  See  p.  42, 

VOL.   II.  18 


274  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

nearly  two  centuries,  which  explains  the  omission  of 
the  features  of  warrior  and  judge  from  ch.  liii.,  and 
their  replacement  by  those  of  a  suffering  patriot, 
prophet  and  priest.  The  reason  of  the  change  is,  not 
because  the  prophet  who  wrote  the  chapter  had  not, 
as  much  as  Isaiah,  an  individual  in  his  view,  but 
because,  in  the  historical  circumstance  of  the  Exile, 
such  an  individual  as  Isaiah  had  promised,  seemed  no 
longer  probable  or  required. 

So  far,  then,  from  the  difference  between  ch.  liii.  and 
previous  prophecies  of  the  Messiah  affording  evidence 
that  in  ch.  liii.  it  is  not  the  Messiah  who  is  presented, 
this  very  change,  that  has  taken  place,  explicable  as 
it  is  from  the  history  of  the  intervening  centuries, 
goes  powerfully  to  prove  that  it  is  the  Messiah,  and 
therefore  an  individual,  whom  the  prophet  so  vividly 
describes. 

The  third  main  objection  to  our  recognising  an 
individual  in  ch.  liii.  is  concerned  only  with  our 
prophet  himself  Is  it  not  impossible,  say  some — or 
at  least  improbably  inconsistent — for  the  same  prophet 
first  to  have  identified  the  Servant  with  the  nation, 
and  then  to  present  him  to  us  as  an  individual  ?  We 
can  understand  the  transference  by  the  same  writer 
of  the  name  from  the  whole  people  to  a  part  of  the 
people;  it  is  a  natural  transference,  and  the  prophet 
sufficiently  explains  it.  But  how  does  he  get  from  a 
part  of  the  nation  to  a  single  individual  ?  If  in  ch.  xhx. 
he  personifies,  under  the  name  Servant,  some  aspect  of 
the  nation,  we  are  surely  bound  to  understand  the  same 
personification  when  the  Servant  is  again  introduced — 
unless  we  have  an  explanation  to  the  contrary.  But 
we  have  none.  The  prophet  gives  no  hint,  except  by 
dropping  the  name  Israel,  that  the  focus  of  his  vision 


xli.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  275 

is  altered, — no  more  paradoxes  such  as  marked  his 
passage  from  the  people  as  a  whole  to  a  portion  of 
them, — no  consciousness  that  any  explanation  whatever 
is  required.  Therefore,  however  much  finer  the  per- 
sonification is  drawn  in  ch.  liii.  than  in  ch.  xlix.,  it  is 
surely  a  personification  still. 

To  which  objection  an  obvious  answer  is,  that  our 
prophet  is  not  a  systematic  theologian,  but  a  dramatic 
poet,  who  allows  his  characters  to  disclose  themselves 
and  their  relation  without  himself  intervening  to 
define  or  relate  them.  And  any  one  who  is  familiar 
with  the  literature  of  Israel  knows,  that  no  less  than 
the  habit  of  drawing  in  from  the  whole  people  upon  a 
portion  of  them,  was  the  habit  of  drawing  in  from 
a  portion  of  the  people  upon  one  individual.  The 
royal  Messiah  Himself  is  a  case  in  point.  The  original 
promise  to  David  was  of  a  seed ;  but  soon  prophecy 
concentrated  the  seed  in  one  glorious  Prince.  The 
promise  of  Israel  had  always  culminated  in  an  indi- 
vidual. Then,  again,  in  the  nation's  awful  sufferings, 
it  had  been  one  man — the  prophet  Jeremiah — who  had 
stood  forth  singly  and  alone,  at  once  the  incarnation 
of  Jehovah's  word,  and  the  illustration  in  his  own 
person  of  all  the  penalty  that  Jehovah  laid  upon  the 
sinful  people.  With  this  tendency  of  his  school  to 
focus  Israel's  hope  on  a  single  individual,  and  especi- 
ally with  the  example  of  Jeremiah  before  him,  it  is 
almost  inconceivable  that  our  prophet  could  have 
thought  of  any  but  an  individual  when  he  drew  his 
portrait  of  the  suffering  Servant.  No  doubt  the 
national  sufferings  were  in  his  heart  as  he  wrote ;  it 
was  probably  a  personal  share  in  them  that  taught  him 
to  write  so  sympathetically  about  the  Man  of  pains, 
who   was   familiar   with   aihng.      But   to   gather   and 


276  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

concentrate  all  these  sufferings  upon  one  noble  figure, 
to  describe  this  figure  as  thoroughly  conscious  of  their 
moral  meaning,  and  capable  of  turning  them  to  his 
people's  salvation,  was  a  process  absolutely  in  harmony 
with  the  genius  of  Israel's  prophecy,  as  well  as  with 
the  trend  of  their  recent  experience;  and  there  is, 
besides,  no  word  in  that  great  chapter,  in  which  the 
process  culminates,  but  is  in  thorough  accordance  with 
it.  So  far,  therefore,  from  its  being  an  impossible  or 
an  unHkely  thing  for  our  prophet  to  have  at  last 
reached  his  conception  of  an  individual,  it  is  almost 
impossible  to  conceive  of  him  executing  so  personal  a 
portrait  as  ch.  Hi.  13-liii.,  without  thinking  of  a  definite 
historical  personage,  such  as  Hebrew  prophecy  had 
ever  associated  with  the  redemption  of  his  people. 

4.  We  have    now    exhausted   the  passages    in   Isa. 
xl.-lxvi.  which  deal  with  the  Servant  of  the  Lord.     We 
^tiave  found  that  our  prophet  identifies  him  at  first  with 
;he  whole  nation,  and  then  with  some  indefinite  portion 
)f  the  nation — indefinite  in  quantity,  but  most  marked 
n  character ;  that  this  personification  grows  more  and 
nore  difficult  to  distinguish  from  a  person ;  and  that 
n  ch.  lii.  13-liii.  there   are  very  strong  reasons,  both 
n  the  text  itself  and  in  the  analogy  of  other  prophecy, 
.to  suppose  that  the  portrait  of  an  individual  is  intended. 
JTo  complete  our  study  of  this  development  of  the  sub- 
stance of  the  Servant,  it  is  necessary  to  notice  that  it 
runs  almost  stage  for  stage  with  a  development  of  his 
bffice.     Up  to  ch.  xlix.,  that  is  to  say,  while  he  is  still 
Some  aspect  of  the  people,  the  Servant  is  a  prophet. 
Jn  ch.   1.,   where    he  is  no  longer   called    Israel,  and 
Approaches  more  nearly  to  an  individual,  his  prophecy 
passes  into  martyrdom.     And  in  ch.  liii.,  where  at  last 
e  recognise  him  as  intended  for  an  actual  personage, 


r 


xii.-liii.]  THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD.  277 


his  martyrdom  becomes  an  expiation  for  the  sins  of  the 
people.  Is  there  a  natural  connection  between  these 
two  developments  ?  We  have  seen  that  it  was  by  a 
very  common  process  that  our  prophet  transferred  the 
national  calling  from  the  mass  of  the  nation  to  a  select 
few  of  the  people.  Is  it  by  any  equally  natural  tendency 
that  he  shrinks  from  the  many  to  the  few,  as  he  passes 
from  prophecy  to  martyrdom,  or  from  the  few  to  the 
one,  as  he  passes  from  martyrdom  to  expiation  ?  It 
is  a  possibihty  for  all  God's  people  to  be  prophets  : 
few  are  needed  as  martyrs.  Is  it  by  any  moral  law 
equally  clear,  that  only  one  man  should  die  for  the 
people  ?  These  are  questions  worth  thinking  about. 
In  Israel's  history  we  have  already  found  the  following 
facts  with  which  to  answer  them.  The  whole  living 
generation  of  Israel  felt  themselves  to  be  sinbearers  : 
Our  fathers  have  sinned,  and  we  bear  their  iniquities. 
This  conscience  and  penalty  were  more  painfully  felt 
by  the  righteous  in  Israel.  But  the  keenest  and 
heaviest  sense  of  them  was  conspicuously  that  experi- 
enced by  one  man — the  prophet  Jeremiah.*  And  yet 
all  these  cases  from  the  past  of  Israel's  history  do 
not  furnish  more  than  an  approximation  to  the  figure 
presented  to  us  in  ch.  liii.  Let  us  turn,  therefore,  to 
the  future  to  see  if  we  can  find  in  it  motive  or 
fulfilment  for  this  marvellous  prophecy. 

*  See  ch.  ii.  of  this  volume. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE  SERVANT  OF  THE  LORD  IN   THE  NEW- 
TESTAMENT. 

IN  last  chapter  we  confined  our  study  of  the  Servant 
of  Jehovah  to  the  text  of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.,  and  to 
the  previous  and  contemporary  history  of  Israel.  Into 
our  interpretation  of  the  remarkable  Figure,  whom 
our  prophet  has  drawn  for  us,  we  have  put  nothing 
which  cannot  be  gathered  from  those  fields  and  by  the 
light  of  the  prophet's  own  day.  But  now  we  must 
travel  further,  and  from  days  far  future  to  our  prophet 
borrow  a  fuller  light  to  throw  back  upon  his  mysterious 
projections.  We  take  this  journey  into  the  future  for 
reasons  he  himself  has  taught  us.  We  have  learned 
that  his  pictures  of  the  Servant  are  not  the  creation 
of  his  own  mind;  a  work  of  art  complete  "through 
fancy's  or  through  logic's  aid."  They  are  the  scattered 
reflections  and  suggestions  of  experience.  The  prophet's 
eyes  have  been  opened  to  read  them  out  of  the  still 
growing  and  incomplete  history  of  his  people.  With 
that  history  they  are  indissolubly  bound  up.  Their 
plainest  forms  are  but  a  transcript  of  its  clearest  facts; 
their  paradoxes  are  its  paradoxes  (reflections  now  of  the 
confused  and  changing  consciousness  of  this  strange 
people,  or  again  of  the  contrast  between  God's  design 
for  them    and   their  real  character) :   their  ideals   are 


THE  SERVANT  IN    THE  NEW  TESTAMENT.        279 

the  suggestion  and  promise  which  its  course  reveals  to 
an  inspired  eye.  Thus,  in  picturing  the  Servant,  our 
prophet  sometimes  confines  himself  to  history  that  has 
already  happened  to  Israel ;  but  sometimes,  also,  upon 
the  purpose  and  promise  of  this,  he  outruns  what  has 
happened,  and  plainly  lifts  his  voice  from  the  future. 
Now  we  must  remember  that  he  does  so,  not  merely 
because  the  history  itself  has  native  possibilities  of 
fulfilment  in  it,  but  because  he  believes  that  it  is  in 
the  hands  of  an  Almighty  and  Eternal  God,  who  shall 
surely  guide  it  to  the  end  of  His  purpose  revealed  in 
it.  It  is  an  article  of  our  prophet's  creed,  that  the 
God  who  speaks  through  him  controls  all  history,  and 
by  His  prophets  can  publish  beforehand  what  course  it 
will  take ;  so  that,  when  we  find  in  our  prophet  any- 
thing we  do  not  see  fully  justified  or  illustrated  by  the 
time  he  wrote,  it  is  only  in  observance  of  the  conditions 
he  has  laid  down,  that  we  seek  for  its  explanation  in 
the  future. 

Let  us,  then,  take  our  prophet  upon  his  own  terms, 
and  follow  the  history,  with  which  he  has  so  closely 
bound  up  the  prophecy  of  the  Servant,  both  in  sugges- 
tion and  fulfilment,  in  order  that  we  may  see  whether  it 
will  yield  to  us  the  secret  of  what,  if  we  have  read  his 
language  aright,  his  eyes  perceived  in  it — the  promise 
of  an  Individual  Servant.  And  let  us  do  so  in  his  faith, 
that  history  is  one  progressive  and  harmonious  move- 
ment under  the  hand  of  the  God  in  whose  name  he  speaks. 
Our  exploration  will  be  rewarded,  and  our  faith  con- 
firmed. We  shall  find  the  nation,  as  promised,  restored 
to  its  own  land,  and  pursuing  through  the  centuries 
its  own  Ufe.  We  shall  find  within  the  nation  what 
the  prophet  looked  for, — an  elect  and  effective  portion, 
with  the  conscience  of  a  national  service  to  the  world. 


28o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

but  looking  for  the  achievement  of  this  to  such  an 
Individual  Servant,  as  the  prophet  seemed  ultimately  to 
foreshadow.  The  vi^orld  itself  we  shall  find  growing 
more  and  more  open  to  this  service.  And  at  last,  from 
Israel's  national  conscience  of  the  service  we  shall  see 
emerge  One  with  the  sense  that  He  alone  is  responsible 
and  able  for  it.  And  this  One  Israelite  will  not  only 
in  His  own  person  exhibit  a  character  and  achieve  a 
work,  that  illustrate  and  far  excel  our  prophet's  highest 
imaginations,  but  will  also  become,  to  a  new  Israel 
infinitely  more  numerous  than  the  old,  the  conscience 
and  inspiration  of  their  collective  fulfilment  of  the  ideal. 


I.  In  the  Old  Testament  we  cannot  be  sure  of  any 
further  appearance  of  our  prophet's  Servant  of  the  Lord. 
It  might  be  thought,  that  in  a  post-exilic  promise, 
Zech.  iii.  8,  /  will  bring  forth  My  Servant  the  Branchy 
we  had  an  identification  of  the  hero  of  the  first  part 
of  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  the  Branch  out  of  Jesse's  roots 
(xi.  i),  with  the  hero  of  the  second  ^divt  ]  hut.  servant 
here  may  so  easily  be  meant  in  the  more  general  sense 
in  which  it  occurs  in  the  Old  Testament,  that  we  are 
not  justified  in  finding  any  more  particular  connection. 
In  Judaism  beyond  the  Old  Testament  the  national  and 
personal  interpretations  of  the  Servant  were  both  current. 
The  Targum  of  Jonathan,  and  both  the  Talmud  of 
Jerusalem  and  the  Talmud  of  Babylon,  recognise  the 
personal  Messiah  in  ch.  liii. ;  the  Targum  also  identifies 
him  as  early  as  in  ch.  xlii.  This  personal  interpretation 
the  Jews  abandoned  only  after  they  had  entered  on 
their  controversy  with  Christian  theologians ;  and  in 
the  cruel  persecutions,  which  Christians  inflicted  upon 
them  throughout  the  middle  ages,  they  were  supplied 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT.        281 

with  only  too  many  reasons  for  insisting  that  ch.  Hii.  was 
prophetic  of  suffering  Israel — the  martyr-people — as  a 
whole.*  It  is  a  strange  history — the  history  of  our 
race,  where  the  first  through  their  pride  and  error  so 
frequently  become  the  last,  and  the  last  through  their 
sufferings  are  set  in  God's  regard  with  the  first.  But  of 
all  its  strange  reversals  none  surely  was  ever  more  com- 
plete than  when  the  followers  of  Him,  who  is  set  forth 
in  this  passage,  the  unresisting  and  crucified  Saviour 
of  men,  behaved  in  His  Name  with  so  great  a  cruelty 
as  to  be  righteously  taken  by  His  enemies  for  the  very 
tyrants  and  persecutors  whom  the  passage  condemns. 

2.  But  it  is  in  the  New  Testament  that  we  see  the 
most  perfect  reflection  of  the  Servant  of  the  Lord,  both 
as  People  and  Person. 

In  the  generation,  from  which  Jesus  sprang,  there 
was,  amid  national  circumstances  closely  resembling 
those  in  which  the  Second  Isaiah  was  written,  a  counter- 
part of  that  Israel  within  Israel,  which  our  prophet  has 
personified  in  ch.  xlix.  The  holy  nation  lay  again  in 
bondage  to  the  heathen,  partly  in  its  own  land,  partly 
scattered  across  the  world ;  and  Israel's  righteousness, 
redemption  and  ingathering  were  once,  more  the  ques- 
tions of  the  day.  The  thoughts  of  the  masses,  as  of 
old  in  Babylonian  days,  did  not  rise  beyond  a  political 
restoration  ;  and  although  their  popular  leaders  insisted 

*  Cf.  The  Jewish  Interpreters  on  Isa.  Uit.,  Driver  and  Neubauer, 
Oxford,  1877.  Abravanel,  who  himself  takes  ch.  Hii,  in  a  national  sense, 
admits,  after  giving  the  Christian  interpretation,  that  "in  fact  Jonathan 
ben  Uziel,  '  the  Targumist,'  applied  it  to  the  Messiah,  who  was  still  to 
come,  and  this  is  likewise  the  opinion  of  the  wise  in  many  of  their 
Midrashim."  And  R.  Moscheh  al  Shech,  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
says  :  "  See,  our  masters  have  w^ith  one  voice  held  as  established  and 
handed  down,  that  here  it  is  King  Messiah  who  is  spoken  of."  (Both 
these  passages  quoted  by  Bredenkamp  in  his  commentary,  p.  307.) 


282  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAlAH. 

upon  national  righteousness  as  necessary  to  this,  it  was 
a  righteousness  mainly  of  a  ceremonial  kind — hard, 
legal,  and  often  more  unlovely  in  its  want  of  enthusiasm 
and  hope  than  even  the  poHtical  fanaticism  of  the  vulgar. 
But  around  the  temple,  and  in  quiet  recesses  of  the  land, 
a  number  of  pious  and  ardent  Israelites  lived  on  the  true 
milk  of  the  word,  and  cherished  for  the  nation  hopes 
of  a  far  more  spiritual  character.  If  the  Pharisees  laid 
their  emphasis  on  the  law,  this  chosen  Israel  drew  their 
inspiration  rather  from  prophecy.;  and  of  all  prophecy  it 
was  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  and  chiefly  the  latter  part  of  it, 
on  which  they  lived. 

As  we  enter  the  Gospel  history  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, we  feel  at  once  that  Isaiah  is  in  the  air.  In  this 
fair  opening  of  the  new  year  of  the  Lord,  the  harbinger 
notes  of  the  book  awaken  about  us  on  all  sides  like  the 
voices  of  birds  come  back  with  the  spring.  In  Mary's 
song,  the  phrase  He  hath  holpen  His  Servant  Israel; 
in  the  description  of  Simeon,  that  he  waited  for  the 
consolation  of  Israel,  a  phrase  taken  from  the  Cornfort 
ye,  comfort  ye  My  people  in  Isa.  xl.  I  ;  such  frequent 
phrases,  too,  as  the  redemption  of  ferusalem,  a  light  of 
the  Gentiles  and  the  glory  of  Israel,  light  to  them  that 
sit  in  darkness,  and  other  echoed  promises  of  light 
and  peace  and  the  remission  of  sins,  are  all  repeated 
from  our  evangelical  prophecy.  In  the  fragments  of 
the  Baptist's  preaching,  which  are  extant,  it  is  remark- 
able that  almost  every  metaphor  and  motive  may  be 
referred  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  and  mostly  to  its  exihc 
half:  the  generation  of  vipers,^  the  trees  and  axe  laid 
to  the  root,f  the  threshing  floor  and  fan, l  the  fire,§  the 

*  Isa.  lix.  5.  t  Id.  vi.  13 ;  ix.  18;  x.  17,  34;  xlvii.  14. 

J  Id.  xxi.  10;  xxviii.  27;  xl.  24;  xli.  15  ff. . 
§  /rf.  i.  31 ;  xlvii.  14. 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT.         283 

bread  and  clothes  to  the  poor,*  and  especially  the  proclama- 
tion of  Jesus,  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God  that  beareth  the  sin 
of  the  world,]  To  John  himself  were  applied  the  words 
of  Isa.  xl.  :  The  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness^  Make 
ye  ready  the  way  of  the  Lord,  make  His  paths  straight; 
and  when  Christ  sought  to  rouse  again  the  Baptist's 
failing  faith  it  was  of  Isa.  Ixi.  that  He  reminded  him. 

Our  Lord,  then,  sprang  from  a  generation  of  Israel, 
which  had  a  strong  conscience  of  the  national  aspect 
of  the  Service  of  God, — a  generation  with  Isa.  xl.-lxvi. 
at  its  heart.  We  have  seen  how  He  Himself  insisted 
upon  the  uniqueness  of  Israel's  place  among  the  nations 
— salvation  is  of  the  fews — and  how  closely  He  identified 
Himself  with  His  people — /  am  not  sent  but  to  the  lost 
sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel.  But  all  Christ's  strong 
expression  of  Israel's  distinction  from  the  rest  of  man- 
kind, is  weak  and  dim  compared  with  His  expression 
of  His  own  distinction  from  the  rest  of  Israel.  If  they 
were  the  one  people  with  whom  God  worked  in  the 
world.  He  was  the  one  Man,  whom  God  sent  to  work 
upon  them,  and  to  use  them  to  work  upon  others. 
We  cannot  tell  how  early  the  sense  of  this  distinction 
came  to  the  Son  of  Mary.  Luke  reveals  it  in  Him, 
before  He  had  taken  His  place  as  a  citizen  and  was 
still  within  the  family :  Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be 
about  My  Fathet^s  business  ?  At  His  first  public  ap- 
pearance He  had  it  fully,  and  others  acknowledged  it. 
In  the  opening  year  of  His  ministry  it  threatened  to  be 
only  a  Distinction  of  the  First — they  took  Him  by  force ^ 
and  would  have  made  Him  King.  But  as  time  went  on 
it  grew  evident  that  it  was  to  be,  not  the  Distinction 
of  the  First,  but  the  Distinction  of  the  Only.      The 

♦  Isa.  Iviii.  7.  f  Undoubtedly  taken  from  Isa,  liii. 


284  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

enthusiastic  crowds  melted  away :  the  small  band, 
whom  He  had  most  imbued  with  His  spirit,  proved 
that  they  could  follow  Him  but  a  certain  length  in 
His  consciousness  of  His  Mission.  Recognising  in 
Him  the  supreme  prophet — Lord,  to  whom  shall  we  go  ? 
Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life — they  immediately 
failed  to  understand,  that  suffering  also  must  be  en- 
dured by  Him  for  the  people :  Be  it  far  from  Thee, 
Lord.  This  suffering  was  His  conscience  and  His 
burden  alone.  Now,  we  cannot  overlook  the  fact, 
that  the  point  at  which  Christ's  way  became  so  solitary 
was  the  same  point  at  which  we  felt  our  prophet's 
language  cease  to  oblige  us  to  understand  by  it  a 
portion  of  the  people,  and  begin  to  be  applicable  to 
a  single  individual, — the  point,  namely,  where  prophecy 
passes  into  martyrdom.  But  whether  our  prophet's 
pictures  of  the  suffering  and  atoning  Servant  of  the 
Lord  are  meant  for  some  aspect  of  the  national  ex- 
perience, or  as  the  portrait  of  a  real  individual,  it  is 
certain  that  in  His  martyrdom  and  service  of  ransom 
Jesus  felt  Himself  to  be  absolutely  alone.  He  who 
had  begun  His  Service  of  God  with  all  the  people  on 
His  side,  consummated  the  same  with  the  leaders  and 
the  masses  of  the  nation  against  Him,  and  without  a 
single  partner  from  among  His  own  friends,  either  in 
the  fate  which  overtook  Him,  or  in  the  conscience 
with  which  He  bore  it. 

Now  all  this  parallel  between  Jesus  of  Nazareth  and 
the  Servant  of  the  Lord  is  unmistakable  enough,  even 
in  this  mere  outline;  but  the  details  of  the  Gospel 
narrative  and  the  language  of  the  Evangelists  still 
more  emphasize  it.  Christ's  herald  hailed  Him  with 
words  which  gather  up  the  essence  of  Isa.  liii.  :  Behold 
the  Lamb  of  God.     He  read  His  own  commission  from 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  NEW   TESTAMENT.        285 

ch.  Ixi. :  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon  Me.  To  describe 
His  first  labours  among  the  people,  His  disciples  again 
used  words  from  ch.  liii.  :  Himself  bare  our  sicknesses. 
To  paint  His  manner  of  working  in  face  of  opposition 
they  quoted  the  whole  passage  from  ch.  xlii. :  Behold 
My  Servant  .  .  .  He  shall  not  strive.  The  name  Servant 
was  often  upon  His  own  lips  in  presenting  Himself: 
Behold,  I  am  among  you  as  one  that  serveth.  When 
His  office  of  prophecy  passed  into  martyrdom,  He 
predicted  for  Himself  the  treatment  which  is  detailed 
in  ch.  1., — the  smiting,  plucking  and  spitting:  and  in 
time,  by  Jew"  and  Gentile,  this  treatment  was  inflicted 
on  Him  to  the  very  letter.*  As  to  His  consciousness 
in  fulfilling  something  more  than  a  martrydom,  and 
alone  among  the  martyrs  of  Israel  offering  by  His 
death  an  expiation  for  His  people's  sins.  His  own 
words  are  frequent  and  clear  enough  to  form  a  counter- 
part to  ch.  liii.  With  them  before  us,  we  cannot 
doubt  that  He  felt  Himself  to  be  the  One  of  whom 
the  people  in  that  chapter  speak,  as  standing  over 
against  them  all,  sinless,  and  yet  bearing  their  sins. 
But  on  the  night  on  which  He  was  betrayed,  while 
just  upon  the  threshold  of  this  extreme  and  unique 
form  of  service,  into  which  it  has  been  given  to  no 
soul  of  man,  that  ever  lived,  to  be  conscious  of  follow- 
ing Him — as  if  anxious  that  His  disciples  should  not 
be  so  overwhelmed  by  the  awful  part  in  which  they 
could  not  imitate  Him  as  to  forget  the  countless 
other  ways  in  which  they  were  called  to  fulfil  His 
serving  spirit — He  took  a  towel  and  girded  Himself  and 
when  He  had  washed  their  feet,  He  said  unto  them,  If  I, 


*  Cf.  with  the  Greek  version  of   Isa.  1.  4-7,  Luke  xviii.  31,  32; 
Matt.  xxvi.  67. 


286  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

thefiy  yotir  Lord  and  Master,  have  zvashed  your  feety  you 
also  ought  to  wash  one  another's  feet — thereby  illustrating 
what  is  so  plainly  set  forth  in  our  prophecy,  that  short 
of  the  expiation,  of  which  only  One  in  His  sinlessness 
has  felt  the  obligation,  and  short  of  the  martyrdom, 
which  it  has  been  given  to  but  few  of  His  people  to 
share  with  Him,  there  are  a  thousand  humble  forms 
rising  out  of  the  needs  of  everyday  life,  in  which  men 
are  called  to  employ  towards  one  another  the  gentle 
and  self-forgetful  methods  of  the  true  Servant  of  God. 

With  the  four  Gospels  in  existence,  no  one  doubts 
or  can  doubt  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  fulfilled  the  cry, 
Behold  My  Servant.  With  Him  it  ceased  to  be  a  mere 
ideal,  and  took  its  place  as  the  greatest  achievement  in 
history. 

3.  In  the  earliest  discourses  of  the  Apostles,  there- 
fore, it  is  not  wonderful  that  Jesus  should  be  expressly 
designated  by  them  as  the  Servant  of  God, — the  Greek 
word  used  being  that  by  which  the  Septuagint  specially 
translates  the  Hebrew  term  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.*  :  God  hath 
glorified  His  Servant  Jesus.  Unto  you  first,  God,  having 
raised  up  His  Servant,  sent  Him  to  bless  you,  in  turning 
away  every  one  of  you  from  your  iniquities.  .  .  .  In  this 
city  against  Thy  holy  Servant  Jesus,  whom  Thou  didst 
anoint,  both  Herod  and  Pontius  Pilate,  with  the  Gentiles 
and  the  peoples  of  Israel,  were  gathered  together  to  do 
whatsoever  Thy  hand  and  Thy  counsel  foreordained  to 
pass.     Grant  that  signs  and  wonders  may  be  done  th'ough 


*  In  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  the  Septuagint  translates  the  Hebrew  for  Servant 
by  one  or  other  of  two  words — Trats  and  bovKos.  Hats  is  used  in 
xH.  8;  xlii.  i;  xliv.  i  ff. ;  xliv.  21;  xlv.  4;  xlix.  6 ;  1.  10;  Hi.  13. 
But  SovXos  is  used  in  xlviii.  20;  xlix.  3  and  5.  In  the  Acts  it  is 
Tratj  that  is  used  of  Christ  :  "An  apostle  is  never  called  Trais  (but 
only  bovKos)  Geou"  (Meyer).     But  David  is  called  Trais  (Acts  iv.  25). 


THE  SERVANT  IN   THE  NEW   TESTAMENT.         287 

the  name  of  Thy  Holy  Servant  Jesus  j^  It  must  also  be 
noticed,  that  in  one  of  the  same  addresses,  and  again 
by  Stephen  in  his  argument  before  the  Sanhedrim, 
Jesus  is  called  The  Righteous  One,]  doubtless  an  allusion 
to  the  same  title  for  the  Servant  in  Isa.  liii.  1 1.  Need 
we  recall  the  interpretation  of  Isa.  liii.  by  Philip  ?i 

It  is  known  to  all  how  Peter  develops  this  parallel  in 
his  First  Epistle,  borrowing  the  figures  but  oftener  the 
very  words  of  Isa.  liii.  to  apply  to  Christ.  Like  the 
Servant  of  the  Lord,  Jesus  is  as  a  lamb  :  He  is  a  patient 
sufferer  in  silence  ;  He  is  the  Righteous — again  the  classic 
title — for  the  unrighteous;  in  exact  quotation  from  the 
Greek  of  Isa.  liii.  :  Tie  did  no  sin,  neither  was  found 
guile  in  His  mouth,  ye  were  as  sheep  gone  astray,  but 
He  Himself  hath  borne  our  sins,  with  whose  stripes  ye  are 
healed.^ 

Paul  applies  two  quotations  from  Isa.  lii.  13-liii.  to 
Christ :  /  have  striven  to  preach  the  Gospel  not  where 
Christ  was  named ;  as  it  is  written.  To  whom  He  was  not 
spoken  of  they  shall  see :  and  they  that  have  not  heard 
shall  understand ;  and  He  hath  made  Him  to  be  sin  for 
us  who  knew  no  sin.\  And  none  will  doubt  that  when 
he  so  often  disputed  that  the  Messiah  must  suffer,  or 
wrote  Messiah  died  for  our  sins  according  to  the  Scrip- 
tures, he  had  Isa.  liii.  in  mind,  exactly  as  we  have 
seen  it  applied  to  the  Messiah  by  Jewish  scholars  a 
hundred  years  later  than  Paul. 

4.  Paul,  however,  by  no  mxeans  confines  the  prophecy 
of  the  Servant  of  the  Lord  to  Jesus  the  Messiah.  In  a 
way  which  has  been  too  much  overlooked  by  students 


*  Acts  iii.  13,  26;  iv.  27-30.  §  I  Peter  i.  19;  ii.  22,  23;  iii.  ] 

f  Acts  iii,  14;  vii.  52.  ||   Rom.  xv.  20  f.  ;  2  Cor.  v.  21. 

%  Acts  viii.  30  ff. 


288  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

of  the  subject,  Paul  revives  and  reinforces  the  collective 
interpretation  of  the  Servant.  He  claims  the  Servant's 
duties  and  experience  for  himself,  his  fellow-labourers 
in  the  gospel,  and  all  believers. 

In  Antioch  of  Pisidia,  Paul  and  Barnabas  said  of 
themselves  to  the  Jews  :  For  so  hath  the  Lord  com- 
manded us  saying,  /  have  set  thee  to  be  a  light  of  the 
Gentiles,  that  thou  shouldest  be  for  salvation  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth*  Again,  in  the  eighth  of  Romans,  Paul 
takes  the  Servant's  confident  words,  and  speaks  them 
of  all  God's  true  people.  He  is  near  that  justifieth  me, 
who  is  he  that  condemneth  me  ?  cried  the  Servant  in  our 
prophecy,  and  Paul  echoes  for  all  believers  :  //  is  God 
that  justifieth  y  who  is  he  that  condemneth  ?  t  And  again, 
in  his  second  letter  to  Timothy,  he  says,  speaking  of 
that  pastor's  work.  For  the  servant  of  the  Lord  must 
not  strive,  but  be  gentle  towards  all;  words  which  were 
borrowed  from,  or  suggested  by,  Isa.  xlii.  1-3. J  In 
these  instances,  as  well  as  in  his  constant  use  of  the 
terms  slave,  servant,  minister,  with-  their  cognates,  Paul 
fulfils  the  intention  of  Jesus,  who  so  continually,  by 
example,  parable,  and  direct  commission,  enforced  the 
life  of  His  people  as  a  Service  to  the  Lord. 

5.  Such,  then,  is  the  New  Testament  reflection  of 
the  Prophecy  of  the  Servant  of  the  Lord,  both  as 
People  and  Person.  Like  all  physical  reflections,  this 
moral  one  may  be  said,  on  the  whole,  to  stand  reverse 

*  Acts  xiii.  47,  after  Isa.  xlix.  6. 

t  Isa.  1.  8,  and  Rom.  viii.  33,  34. 

X  2  Tim.  ii.  24.  We  may  note,  also,  how  Paul  in  Eph.  vi.  takes  the 
armour  with  which  God  is  clothed  in  Isa.  lix.  17,  breastplate  and  helmet, 
and  equips  the  individual  Christian  with  them  ;  and  how,  in  the  same 
passage,  he  takes  for  the  Christian  from  Isa.  xl.  the  Messiah's  girdle 
of  truth  and  the  sword  of  the  Spirit, — he  shall  smite  the  land  with  the 
rod  0/  his  mouth,  and  with  the  breath  of  his  lips  shall  he  slay  the  wicked. 


THE  SERVANT  IN  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT.        289 

to  its  original.  In  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  the  Servant  is  People 
first,  Person  second.  But  in  the  New  Testament— | 
except  for  a  faint  and  scarcely  articulate  application  t(j) 
Israel  in  the  beginning  of  the  gospels — the  Servant  is^ 
Person  first  and  People  afterwards.  The  Divine  Ideal 
which  our  prophet  saw  narrowing  down  from  the  Nation 
to  an  Individual,  was  owned  and  realised  by  Christ. 
But  in  Him  it  was  not  exhausted.  With  added  warmth 
and  light,  with  a  new  power  of  expansion,  it  passed 
through  Him  to  fire  the  hearts  and  enlist  the  wills  of 
an  infinitely  greater  people  than  the  Israel  for  whom  it 
was  originally  designed.  With  this  witness,  then,  of 
history  to  the  prophecies  of  the  Servant,  our  way  in 
expounding  and  applying  them  is  clear.  Jesus  Christ 
is  their  perfect  fulfilment  and  illustration.  But  we  who 
are  His  Church  are  to  find  in  them  our  ideal  and  duty, 
— our  duty  to  God  and  to  the  world.  In  this,  as  in  so 
many  other  matters,  the  unfulfilled  prophecy  of  Israel 
is  the  conscience  of  Christianity. 


VOL.  II.  19 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  SERVICE   OF  GOD   AND  MAN. 
Isaiah  xlii.   1-7. 

WE  now  understand,  whom  to  regard  as  the  Servant 
of  the  Lord.  The  Service  of  God  was  a  com- 
mission to  witness  and  prophesy  for  God  upon  earth, 
made  out  at  first  in  the  name  of  the  entire  nation  Israel. 
When  their  unfitness  as  a  whole  became  apparent,  it 
was  delegated  to  a  portion  of  them.  But  as  there  were 
added  to  its  duties  of  prophecy,  those  of  martyrdom 
and  atonement  for  the  sins  of  the  people,  our  prophet, 
it  would  seem,  saw  it  focussed  in  the  person  of  an 
individual. 

In  history  Jesus  Christ  has  fulfilled  this  commission 
both  in  its  national  and  in  its  personal  aspects.  He 
realised  the  ideal  of  the  prophet-people.  He  sacrificed 
Himself  and  made  atonement  for  the  sins  of  men.  But 
having  illustrated  the  service  of  God  in  the  world, 
Christ  did  not  exhaust  it.  He  returned  it  to  His  people, 
a  more  clamant  conscience  than  ever,  and  He  also  gave 
them  grace  to  fulfil  its  demands.  Through  Christ  the 
original  destination  of  these  prophecies  becomes,  as 
Paul  saw,  their  ultimate  destination  as  well.  That 
Israel  refused  this  Service  or  failed  in  it  only  leaves  it 
more  clearly  to  us  as  duty ;  that  Jesus  fulfilled  it  not 
only  confirms  that  duty,  but  adds  hope  and  courage  to 
discharge  it. 


xlii.  1-7.]        THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  291 

Although  the  terms  of  this  Service  were  pubHshed 
nearly  two  thousand  five  hundred  years  ago,  in  a  petty 
dialect  that  is  now  dead,  to  a  helpless  tribe  of  captives 
in  a  world,  whose  civilisation  has  long  sunk  to  ruin, 
yet  these  terms  are  so  free  of  all  that  is  provincial  or 
antique,  they  are  so  adapted  to  the  lasting  needs  of 
humanity,  they  are  so  universal  in  their  scope,  they 
are  so  instinct  with  that  love  which  never  faileth, 
though  prophecies  fail  and  tongues  cease,  that  they  come 
home  to  heart  and  conscience  to-day  with  as  much 
tenderness  and  authority  as  ever.  The  first  programme 
of  these  terms  is  given  in  ch.  xlii.  1-7.  The  authorised 
English  version  is  one  of  unapproachable  beauty,  but 
its  emphasis  and  rhythm  are  not  the  emphasis  and 
rhythm  of  the  original,  and  it  has  missed  one  at  least 
of  the  striking  points  of  the  Hebrew.  The  following 
version,  which  makes  no  attempt  at  elegance,  is  almost 
literal,  follows  the  same  order  as  the  original  that  it 
may  reproduce  the  same  emphasis,  and,  as  far  as 
EngHsh  can,  repeats  the  original  rhythm.  The  point, 
which  it  rescues  from  the  neglect  of  the  Authorised 
Version,  is  this,  that  the  verbs  used  of  the  Servant  in 
ver.  4,  He  shall  not  fade  nor  break,  are  the  same  as  are 
used  of  the  wick  and  the  reed  in  ver.  3. 

Lo,  My  Servant !  I  hold  by  htm  ; 
My  Chosen  !    Well-pleased  is  My  soul! 
I  have  set  My  Spirit  upon  him  ; 
Law  to  the  Nations  he  brings  forth. 


He  cries  not,  nor  lifts  up,  * 

Nor  lets  his  voice  be  heard  in  the  street. 

*  The  English  equivalent  is,  nor  is  loud. 


292  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

Reed  that  is  hi'oken  he  breaks  not  off, 
Wick  that  is  fading  he  does  not  quench 
Faithfully  brings  he  forth  Law. 
He  shall  not  fade  neither  break^ 
Till  he  have  set  in  the  Earth  *  Law  ; 
And  for  his  teaching  the  Lsles  are  waiting. 


Thus  saith  the  God,  Jehovah, 

Creator  of  the  heavens  that  stretched  them  forthf 

Spreader  of  Earth  and  her  produce, 

Giver  of  breath  to  the  people  upon  her, 

And  of  spirit  to  them  that  walk  therein  : 

I,  Jehovah,  have  called  thee  in  righteousness. 

To  grasp  thee  fast  by  thy  hand,  and  to  keep  thee, 

And  to  set  thee  for  a  covenant  of  the  People, 

For  a  light  of  the  Nations : 

To  open  blind  eyes, 

To  bring  forth  from  durance  the  captive, 

From  prison  the  dwellers  in  darkness. 

I.  The  Conscience  of  Service. 

As  several  of  these  Hnes  indicate,  this  is  a  Service  to 
Man,  but  what  we  must  first  fasten  upon  is  that  before 
being  a  Service  to  Man  it  is  a  Service  for  God.  Behold, 
My  Servant,  says  God's  commission  very  emphatically. 
And  throughout  the  prophecy  the  Servant  is  presented 
as  chosen  of  God,  inspired  of  God,  equipped  of  God, 
God's  creature,  God's  instrument ;  useful  only  because 
he  is  used,  influential  because  he  is  influenced,  victorious 
because  he  is  obedient ;  learning  the  methods  of  his 

*  This  time  with  the  article,  so  not  the  land  of  Judah  only,  but  the 
Earth. 


xlii.  I-7.J        THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  293 

work  by  daily  wakefulness  to  God's  voice,  a  good 
speaker  only  because  he  is  first  a  good  listener ;  with 
no  strength  or  courage  but  what  God  lends,  and 
achieving  all  for  God's  glory.  Notice  how  strongly  it 
is  said  that  God  holds  by  him,  grasps  him  by  the  hand. 
We  shall  see  that  his  Service  is  as  sympathetic  and 
comprehensive  a  purpose  for  humanity  as  was  ever 
dreamed  in  any  thought  or  dared  in  any  life.  Whether 
we  consider  its  tenderness  for  individuals,  or  the 
universalism  of  its  hope  for  the  world,  or  its  gentle 
appreciation  of  all  human  effort  and  aspiration,  or  its 
conscience  of  mankind's  chief  evil,  or  the  utterness  of 
its  self-sacrifice  in  order  to  redeem  men, — we  shall  own 
it  to  be  a  programme  of  human  duty,  and  a  prophecy 
of  human  destiny,  to  which  the  growing  experience  of 
our  race  has  been  able  to  add  nothing  that  is  essential. 
But  the  Service  becomes  all  that  to  man,  because  it 
first  takes  all  that  from  God.  Not  only  is  the  Servant's 
sense  of  duty  to  all  humanity  just  the  conscience  of 
God's  universal  sovereignty, — for  it  is  a  remarkable 
and  never-to-be-forgotten  fact,  that  Israel  recognised 
their  God's  right  to  the  whole  world,  before  they  felt 
their  own  duty  to  mankind, — but  the  Servant's  character 
and  methods  are  the  reflection  of  the  Divine.  Feature 
by  feature  the  Servant  corresponds  to  His  Lord.  His 
patience  is  but  sympathy  with  Jehovah's  righteousness, 
— /  will  uphold  thee  with  the  right  hand  of  My  righteous- 
ness. His  gentleness  with  the  unprofitable  and  the 
unlovely — He  breaks  not  off  the  broken  reed  nor  quenches 
the  flickering  wick — is  but  the  temper  of  the  everlasting 
God,  who  giveth  power  to  the  faint,  and  to  them  that 
have  no  might  He  increaseth  strength.  His  labour  and 
passion  and  agony,  even  they  have  been  anticipated  in 
the  Divine  nature,  for  the  LORD  stirreth  up  zeal  like  a 


204  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

man  of  war;  He  saith,  I  will  cry  out  like  a  travailing 
woman.  In  no  detail  is  the  Servant  above  his  Master. 
His  character  is  not  original,  but  is  the  impress  of 
his  God's  :  /  have  put  My  spirit  upon  him. 

There  are  many  in  our  day,  who  deny  this  indebted- 
ness of  the  human  character  to  the  Divine,  and  in  the 
Service  of  Man  would  have  us  turn  our  backs  upon 
God.  Positivists,  while  admitting  that  the  earliest 
enthusiasm  of  the  individual  for  his  race  did  originate 
in  the  love  of  a  Divine  Being,  assert  nevertheless  that 
we  have  grown  away  from  this  illusory  motive ;  and 
that  in  the  example  of  humanity  itself  we  may  find 
all  the  requisite  impulse  to  serve  it.  The  philosophy 
of  history,  which  the  extreme  Socialists  have  put 
forward,  is  even  more  explicit.  According  to  them,  man- 
kind was  disturbed  in  a  primitive,  tribal  socialism — or 
service  of  each  other — by  the  rise  of  spiritual  religion, 
which  drew  the  individual  away  from  his  kind  and 
absorbed  him  in  selfish  relations  to  God.  Such  a 
stage,  represented  by  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  faiths, 
and  by  the  individualist  political  economy  which  has 
run  concurrent  with  the  later  developments  of  Chris- 
tianity, was  (so  these  Socialists  admit)  perhaps  neces- 
sary for  temporary  discipline  and  culture,  Uke  the  land 
of  Egypt  to  starved  Jacob's  children  ;  but  Hke  Egypt, 
when  it  turned  out  to  be  the  house  of  bondage,  the 
individualist  economy  and  religion  are  now  to  be 
abandoned  for  the  original  land  of  promise, — Socialism 
once  more,  but  universal  instead  of  tribal  as  of  old. 
Out  of  this  analogy,  which  is  such  Socialists'  own, 
Sinai  and  the  Ten  Commandments  are,  of  course, 
omitted.  We  are  to  march  back  to  freedom  without  a 
God,  and  settle  down  to  love  and  serve  each  other  by 
administration. 


xlii.  1-7.]        THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  295 

But  (ian  we  turn  our  backs  on  God,  without  hurting 
man  ?  The  natural  history  of  philanthropy  would  seem 
to  say  that  we  cannot.  This  prophecy  is  one  of  its 
witnesses.  Earliest  ideal  as  it  is,  of  a  universal  service 
of  mankind,  it  starts  in  its  obligation  from  the  universal 
Sovereignty  of  God  ;  it  starts  in  every  one  of  its  affec- 
tions from  some  affection  of  the  Divine  character.  And 
we  have  not  grown  away  from  the  need  of  its  everlast- 
ing sources.  Cut  off  God  from  the  Service  of  man, 
and  the  long  habit  and  inherent  beauty  of  that  Service 
may  perpetuate  its  customs  for  a  few  generations  ;  but 
the  inevitable  call  m.ust  come  to  subject  conduct  to  the 
altered  intellectual  conditions,  and  in  the  absence  of 
God  every  man's  ideal  shall  surely  turn  from,  How  can 
I  serve  my  neighbour  ?  to,  How  can  I  make  my  neigh- 
bour serve  me  ?  As  our  prophet  reminds  us  in  his 
vivid  contrast  between  Israel,  the  Servant  of  the  Lord, 
and  Babylon,  who  saith  in  her  heart :  I  am,  and  there  is 
none  beside  me,  there  are  ultimately  but  two  alternative 
lords  of  the  human  will,  God  and  Self.  If  we  revolt 
from  the  Authority  and  Example  of  the  One,  we 
shall  surely  become  subject,  in  the  long  run,  to  the 
ignorance,  the  short-sightedness,  the  pedantry,  the 
cruelty  of  the  other.  These  words  are  used  advisedly. 
With  no  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  every  human  life 
as  created  in  the  image  of  God,  and  with  no  example 
of  an  Infinite  Mercy  before  them,  men  would  leave  to 
perish  all  that  was  weak,  or,  from  the  limited  point  of 
view  of  a  single  community  or  generation,  unprofitable. 
Some  Positivists  and  those  Socialists,  who  do  not 
include  God  in  the  society  they  seek  to  establish,  admit 
that  they  expect  something  like  that  to  follow  from  their 
denial  of  God.  In  certain  Positivist  proposals  for  the 
reform  of  charity,  we  are  told  that  the  ideal  scheme  of 


296  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

social  relief  would  be  the  one  which  limited  itself  to 
persons  judged  to  be  of  use  to  the  community  as  a 
whole ;  that  is,  that  in  their  succour  of  the  weak,  their 
bounty  to  the  poor,  and  their  care  of  the  young,  society 
should  be  guided,  not  by  the  eternal  laws  of  justice  and 
of  mercy,  but  by  the  opinions  of  the  representatives  of 
the  pubhc  for  the  time  being  and  by  their  standard  of 
utihty  to  the  commonwealth.  Your  atheist-Socialist  is 
still  more  frank.  In  the  state,  which  he  sees  rising 
after  he  has  got  rid  of  Christianity,  he  would  suppress, 
he  tells  us,  all  who  preached  such  a  thing  as  the  fear 
of  the  future  life,  and  he  would  not  repeat  the  present 
exceptional  legislation  for  the  protection  of  women  and 
children,  for  whom,  he  whines,  far  too  much  has  been 
recently  done  in  comparison  with  what  has  been 
enacted  for  the  protection  of  men.*  These  are,  of 
course,  but  vain  things  which  the  heathen  imagine 
(and  some  of  us  have  an  ideal  of  socialism  very 
different  from  the  godlessness  which  has  usurped  the 
noble  name),  but  they  serve  to  illustrate  what  clever 
men,  who  have  thrown  off  all  belief  in  God,  will  bring 
themselves  to  hope  for :  a  society  utterly  Babylonian, 
without  pity  or  patience, — if  it  were  possible  for  these 
eternal  graces  to  die  out  of  any  human  community, — 
subject  to  the  opinion  of  pedants,  whose  tender  mercies 
would  be  far  more  fatal  to  the  weak  and  poor  than 
the  present  indifference  of  the  rich  ;  seriously  fettering 
liberty  of  conscience  and  destitute  of  chivalry.  It  may 
be  that  our  Positivist  critics  are  right,  and  that  the 
interests  of  humanity  have  suffered  in  Christian  times 
from  the  prevalence  of  too  selfish  and  introspective  a 
religion ;    but   whether    our    religion    has   looked   too 

*  Bax,  Religion  of  Socialism. 


xlii.  1-7.]        THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  297 

intensely  inward  or  not,  we  cannot,  it  is  certain,  do 
without  a  religion  that  looks  steadily  up,  owning  the 
discipline  of  Divine  Law  and  the  Example  of  an  Infinite 
Mercy  and  Longsuffering. 

But,  though  we  had  never  heard  of  Positivism  or  of 
the  Socialism  that  denies  God,  our  age,  with  its  popular 
and  public  habits,  would  still  require  this  example 
of  Service,  which  our  prophecy  enforces :  it  is  an 
age  so  charged  with  the  instincts  of  work,  with  the 
ambition  to  be  useful,  with  the  fashion  of  altruism; 
but  so  empty  of  the  sense  of  God,  of  reverence,  dis- 
cipline and  prayer.  We  do  not  need  to  learn  phil- 
anthropy,— the  thing  is  in  the  air;  but  we  do  need 
to  be  taught  that  philanthropy  demands  a  theology 
both  for  its  purity  and  its  effectiveness.  When  phil- 
anthropy has  become,  what  it  is  so  much  to-day,  the 
contest  of  rival  politicians,  the  ambition  of  every 
demagogue,  who  can  get  his  head  above  the  crowd, 
the  fitful  self-indulgence  of  weak  hearts,  the  opportunity 
of  vain  theorists,  and  for  all  a  temptation  to  work  with 
lawless  means  for  selfish  ends, — it  is  time  to  remember 
that  the  Service  of  Man  is  first  of  all  a  great  Service  for 
God.  This  faith  alone  can  keep  us  from  the  wilfulness, 
the  crotchets  and  the  insubordination,  which  spoil  so 
many  well-intentioned  to  their  kind,  and  so  wofully 
break  up  the  ranks  of  progress.  Humility  is  the  first 
need  of  the  philanthropist  of  to-day  :  humility,  discipline 
and  the  sense  of  proportion;  and  these  are  qualities, 
which  only  faith  in  God  and  the  conscience  of  law  are 
known  to  bestow  upon  the  human  heart.  It  is  the 
fear  of  God  that  will  best  preserve  us  from  making  our 
philanthropy  the  mere  flattery  of  the  popular  appetite. 
To  keep  us  utterly  patient  with  men  we  need  to  think 
of  God's  patience  with  ourselves.      While   to   us  all 


298  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAlAH. 

there  come  calls  to  sacrifice,  which  our  fellow-men 
may  so  little  deserve  from  us,  and  against  which  our 
self-culture  can  plead  so  many  reasons,  that  unless 
God's  will  and  example  were  before  us,  the  calls  would 
never  be  obeyed.  In  short,  to  be  most  useful  in  this 
life  it  is  necessary  to  feel  that  we  are  used.  Look  at 
Christ.  To  Him  philanthropy  was  no  mere  habit 
and  spontaneous  affection ;  even  for  that  great  heart 
the  love  of  man  had  to  be  enforced  by  the  compulsion 
of  the  will  of  God.  The  busy  days  of  healing  and 
teaching  had  between  them  long  nights  of  lonely  prayer ; 
and  the  Son  of  God  did  not  pass  to  His  supreme  self- 
sacrifice  for  men  till  after  the  struggle  with,  and  the 
submission  to.  His  Father's  will  in  Gethsemane. 

II.  The  Substance  of  Service. 

The  substance  of  the  Servant's  work  is  stated  in  one 
word,  uttered  thrice  in  emphatic  positions.  Judgement 
for  the  nations  shall  he  bring  forth.  .  .  .  According  to 
truth  shall  he  bring  forth  judgement.  .  .  .  He  shall  not 
flag  nor  break,  till  he  set  in  the  earth  *  judgement. 

The  English  word  judgement  is  a  natural  but^  mis- 
leading translation  of  the  original,  and  we  must  dismiss 
at  once  the  idea  of  judicial  sentence,  which  it  suggests. 
The  Hebrew  is  "  mishpat,"  which  means,  among  other 
things,  either  a  single  statute,  or  the  complete  body 
of  law  which  God  gave  Israel  by  Moses,  at  once  their 
creed  and  their  code;  or,  perhaps,  also  the  abstract 
quality  of  justice  or  right.  We  rendered  it  as  the  latter 
in  Isa.  i.-xxxix.      But,  as  will  be  seen  from  the  note 


*  This  time  "  arets  "  with  the  article.     So  not  the  land  of  Judah  only 
but  the  world. 


xHi.  1-7]         THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  299 

.below,*  when  used  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  without  the  article, 
as  here,  it  is  the  "  mishpat  "  of  Jehovah, — not  so  much 
the  actual  body  of  statutes  given  to  Israel,  as  the 
principles  of  right  or  justice  which  they  enforce.  In 
one  passage  it  is  given  in  parallel  to  the  civic  virtues 
righteousness,  truth,  uprightness,  but — as  its  etymology 
compared  with  theirs  shows  us — it  is  these  viewed 
not  in  their  character  as  virtues,  but  in  their  obligation 
as  ordained  by  God.  Hence,  duty  to  Jehovah  as 
inseparable  from  His  religion  (Ewald),  religion  as  the 
law  of  life  (Delitzsch),  the  law  (Cheyne,  who  admirably 
compares  the  Arabic  ed-Din)  are  all  good  renderings. 
Professor  Davidson  gives  the  fullest  exposition.  "  It 
can  scarcely,"  he  says,  "  be  rendered  *  religion '  in  the 
modern  sense,  it  is  the  equity  and  civil  right  which  is 
the  result  of  the  true  religion  of  Jehovah ;  and  though 


*  The  following  are  the  four  main  meanings  of  "  mishpat "  in 
Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  :  i.  In  a  general  sense,  a  legal  process,  xli.  I,  let  us  come 
together  to  thejudgement,  or  the  law  (with  the  article),  cf.  1.  8,  man  of  my 
7udgement,i.e,,  my  fellow-at-law^,  my  adversary;  liii.  8,  oppression  and 
htdgementj  i.e.,  a  judgement  which  was  oppressive,  a  legal  injustice. 
2.  A  person's  cause  or  right,  xl.  27,  xlix.  4.  3.  Ordinance  instituted  by 
Jehovah  for  the  life  and  worship- of  His  people,  Iviii.  2,  ordinances 
of  righteousness,  i.e.,  either  canonical  laivs,  or  ordinances  by  observing 
which  the  people  would  make  themselves  righteous,  4.  In  general, 
the  sum  of  the  laws  given  by  Jehovah  to  Israel,  the  Law,  Iviii.  2, 
Law  of  their  God;  li.  4,  Jehovah  says  My  Law  (Rev.  Yev.  judgement), 
parallel  to  "Torah"  or  Revelation  (Rev.  Ver.  law).  Then  absolutely, 
without  the  article  or  Jehovah's  name  attached,  xlii.  I,  3,  4.  In  Ivi.  I 
parallel  to  righteousness ;  lix.  14  parallel  to  righteousness,  truth 
and  uprightness.  In  fact,  in  this  last  use,  while  represented  as 
equivalent  to  civic  morality,  it  is  this,  not  as  viewed  in  its 
character,  right,  upright,  but  in  its  obligation  as  ordained  by  God : 
morality  as  His  Law.  The  absence  of  the  article  may  either  mean 
what  it  means  in  the  case  of  people  and  land,  i.e.,  the  Law,  too  much 
of  a  proper  name  to  need  the  article,  or  it  may  be  an  attempt  to 
abstract  the  quality  of  the  Law;  and  if  so  mishpat  is  equal  io justice. 


300  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

comprehended  under  religion  in  the  Old  Testament 
sense,  is  rather,  according  to  our  conceptions,  religion 
applied  in  civil  life.  Of  old  the  religious  unit  was  the 
state,  and  the  life  of  the  state  was  the  expression  of  its 
religion.  Morality  was  law  or  custom,  and  both  reposed 
upon  God.  A  condition  of  thought  such  as  now  pre- 
vails, where  morality  is  based  on  independent  grounds, 
whether  natural  law  or  the  principles  inherent  in  the 
mmd  apart  from  rehgion,  did  not  then  exist.  What  the 
prophet  means  by  '  bringing  forth  right '  is  explained 
in  another  passage,  where  it  is  said  that  Jehovah's 
'arms  shall  judge  the  peoples,'  and  that  the  'isles 
shall  wait  for  His  arm'(ch.  li.  5).  'Judgment'  is  that 
pervading  of  life  by  the  principles  of  equity  and  humanity 
which  is  the  immediate  effect  of  the  true  religion  of 
Jehovah."  *  In  short,  "  mishpat  "  is  not  only  the  civic 
righteousness  and  justice,  to  which  it  is  made  parallel 
in  our  prophecy,  but  it  is  these  with  God  behind  them. 
On  the  one  hand  it  is  conterminous  with  national  virtue, 
on  the  other  it  is  the  ordinance  and  will  of  God. 

This,  then,  is  the  burden  of  the  Servant's  work,  to 
pervade  and  instruct  every  nation's  life  on  earth  with 
the  righteousness  and  piety  that  are  ordained  of  God. 
He  shall  not  flag  nor  breaky  till  he  have  set  in  the 
earth  Law, — till  in  every  nation  justice,  humanity  and 
worship  are  established  as  the  law  of  God,  We  have 
seen  that  the  Servant  is  in  this  passage  still  some 
aspect  or  shape  of  the  people, — the  people  who  are  not 
a  people,  but  scattered  among  the  brickfields  of  Baby- 
lonia, a  horde  of  captives.  When  we  keep  that  in  mind, 
two  or  three  things  come  home  to  us  about  this  task 
of  theirs.     First,  it  is  no  mere  effort  at  proselytism.     It 

*  Expositor,  second  series,  vol,  viii.,  p.  364, 


xlii.  1-7.]         THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  301 

is  not  an  ambition  to  Judaise  the  world.  The  national 
consciousness  and  provincial  habits,  which  cling  about 
so  many  of  the  prophecies  of  Israel's  relation  to  the 
world,  have  dropped  from  this  one,  and  the  nation's 
mission  is  identified  with  the  establishment  of  law%  the 
diffusion  of  light,  the  relief  of  suffering.  /  will  give  thee 
for  a  light  to  the  nations :  to  open  blind  eyes,  to  bring 
out  from  durance  the  bound,  from  the  prison  the  dwellers 
in  darkness*  Again,  it  is  no  mere  office  of  preaching, 
to  which  the  Servant's  commission  is  limited,  no  mere 
inculcation  of  articles  of  belief.  But  we  have  here  the 
same  rich,  broad  idea  of  religion,  identifying  it  with 
the  whole  national  life,  which  we  found  so  often 
illustrated  by  Isaiah,  and  which  is  one  of  the  beneficial 
results  to  religion  of  God's  choice  for  Himself  of  a 
nation  as  a  whole,  f  What  such  a  Service  has  to  give 
the  world,  is  not  merely  testimony  to  the  truth,  nor 
fresh  views  of  it,  nor  artistic  methods  of  teaching  it ; 
but  social  life  under  its  obligation,  the  public  conscience 
of  it,  the  long  tradition  and  habit  of  it,  the  breed — what 
the  prophets  call  the  seed — of  it.  To  establish  true 
religion  as  the  constitution,  national  duty,  and  regular 
practice  of  every  people  under  the  sun,  in  all  the 
details  of  order,  cleanliness,  justice,  purity  and  mercy, 
in  which  it  had  been  applied  to  themselves, — such  was 
the  Service  and  the  Destiny  of  Israel.  And  the  marvel 
of  so  universal  and  political  an  ideal  was,  that  it  came 
not  to  a  people  in  the  front  ranks  of  civilisation  or  of 
empire,  but  to  a  people  that  at  the  time  had  not  even  a 
political  shape  for  themselves, — a  mere  herd  of  captives, 

*  This  might,  of  course,  only  mean  what  the  Servant  had  to  do  for 
his  captive  countrymen.  But  coming  as  it  does  after  the  light  of 
nations,  it  seems  natural  to  take  it  in  its  wider  and  more  spiritual  sense. 

t  See  ch.  xv.  of  this  volume. 


302  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

despised  and  rejected  of  men.  When  we  realise  this, 
we  understand  that  they  never  would  have  dared  to 
think  of  it,  or  to  speak  of  it  to  one  another,  unless  they 
had  believed  it  to  be  the  purpose  and  \\\\\  of  Almighty 
God  for  them  ;  unless  they  had  recognised  it,  not  only  as 
a  service  desirable  and  true  in  itself,  and  needed  also  by 
humanity,  but  withal  as  His  ^'  mishpat,"  His  judgement 
or  law,  who  by  His  bare  word  can  bring  all  things 
to  pass.  But  before  we  see  how  strongly  He  impressed 
them  with  this,  that  His  creative  force  was  in  their 
mission,  let  us  turn  to  the  methods  by  which  He  com- 
manded them  to  achieve  it, — methods  corresponding  to 
its  purely  spiritual  and  universal  character. 

HI.  The  Temper  of  Service. 

I.  He  shall  not  cry,  nor  lift  up, 

Nor  make  his  voice  to  be  heard  in  the  street. 

There  is  nothing  more  characteristic  of  our  prophecy 
than  its  belief  in  the  power  of  speech,  its  exultation  in 
the  music  and  spell  of  the  human  voice.  It  opens  with 
a  chorus  of  high  calls :  none  are  so  lovely  to  it  as 
heralds,  or  so  musical  as  watchmen  when  they  lift  up 
the  voice ;  it  sets  the  preaching  of  glad  tidings  before 
the  people  as  their  national  ideal ;  eloquence  it  describes 
as  a  sharp  sword  leaping  from  God's  scabbard.  The 
Servant  of  the  Lord  is  trained  in  style  of  speech ;  his 
words  are  as  pointed  arrows ;  he  has  the  mouth  of  the 
learned,  a  voice  to  command  obedience.  The  prophet's 
own  tones  are  superb  :  nowhere  else  does  the  short  sen- 
tentiousness  of  Hebrew  roll  out  into  such  long,  sonorous 
periods.  He  uses  speech  in  every  style :  for  comfort, 
for  bitter  controversy,  in  clear  proclamation,  in  deep- 
throated  denunciation  :  Call  ivith  the  throat,  spare  not,  lift 


xlii.  1-7.]         THE  SERVICE   OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  303 

Up  the  voice  like  a  trumpet.  His  constant  key-notes  are, 
speak  a  word,  lift  up  the  voice  with  strength,  sing,  publish, 
declare.  In  fact,  there  is  no  use  to  which  the  human 
voice  has  ever  been  put  in  the  Service  of  Man,  for  com- 
fort's sake,  or  for  justice,  or  for  liberty,  for  the  diffusion 
of  knowledge  or  for  the  scattering  of  music,  which  our 
prophet  does  not  enhst  and  urge  upon  his  people. 

When,  then,  he  says  of  the  Servant  that  he  shall  not 
cry,  nor  lift  up,  nor  make  his  voice  to  be  heard  in  the  street, 
he  cannot  be  referring  to  the  means  and  art  of  the 
Service,  but  rather  to  the  tone  and  character  of  the 
Servant.  Each  of  the  triplet  of  verbs  he  uses  shows 
us  this.  The  first  one,  translated  cry,  is  not  the  cry 
or  call  of  the  herald  voice  in  ch.  xl.,  the  high,  clear 
Kara ;  it  is  ssa'ak,  a  sharper  word  with  a  choke  in  the 
centre  of  it  meaning  to  scream,  especially  under  excite- 
ment. Then  to  lift  up  is  the  exact  equivalent  of  our 
'*  to  be  loud."  And  if  we  were  seeking  to  translate 
into  Hebrew  our  phrase  "to  advertise  oneself,"  we 
could  not  find  a  closer  expression  for  it  than  to  make  his 
voice  be  heard  in  the  street.  To  be  "screamy,"  to  be 
'•'loud,"  to  "advertise  oneself," — these  modern  expres- 
sions for  vices  that  were  ancient  as  well  as  modern 
render  the  exact  force  of  the  verse.  Such  the  Servant 
of  God  will  not  be  nor  do.  He  is  at  once  too  strong, 
too  meek  and  too  practical.  That  God  is  with  him, 
holding  him  fast,  keeps  him  calm  and  unhysterical;  that 
he  is  but  God's  instrument  keeps  him  humble  and 
quiet ;  and  that  his  heart  is  in  his  work  keeps  him 
from  advertising  himself  at  its  expense.  It  is  perhaps 
especially  for  the  last  of  these  reasons  that  Matthew  (in 
his  twelfth  chapter)  quotes  this  passage  of  our  Lord. 
Jesus  had  been  disturbed  in  His  labours  of  heahng 
by   the    disputatious    Pharisees.      He   had   answered 


304  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

them,  and  then  withdrawn  from  their  neighbourhood. 
Many  sick  were  brought  after  Him  to  His  privacy, 
and  He  healed  them  all.  But  He  charged  them  that 
they  should  not  make  Him  known;  that  it  might  be  ful- 
filled which  was  spoken  by  Isaiah  the  prophet,  saying, 
Behold,  My  Servant  .  .  .  he  shall  not  strive,  nor  cry  aloud, 
neither  shall  any  one  hear  his  voice  in  the  streets.  .  Now 
this  cannot  be,  what  some  carelessly  take  it  for,  an 
example  against  controversy  or  debate  of  all  kinds, 
for  Jesus  had  Himself  just  been  debating ;  nor  can  it 
be  meant  as  an  absolute  forbidding  of  all  publishing 
of  good  works,  for  Christ  has  shown  us,  on  other 
occasions,  that  such  advertisement  is  good.  The 
difficulty  is  explained,  by  what  we  have  seen  to  ex- 
plain other  perplexing  actions  of  our  Lord,  His 
intensely  practical  spirit.  The  work  to  be  done 
determined  everything.  When  it  made  argument  neces- 
sary, as  that  same  day  it  had  done  in  the  synagogue, 
then  our  Lord  entered  on  argument :  He  did  not  only 
heal  the  man  with  the  withered  hand,  but  He  made 
him  the  text  of  a  sermon.  But  when  talking  about 
His  work  hindered  it,  provoked  the  Pharisees  to  come 
near  with  their  questions,  and  took  up  His  time  and 
strength  in  disputes  with  them,  then  for  the  work's 
sake  He  forbade  talk  about  it.  We  have  no  trace  of 
evidence  that  Christ  forbade  this  advertisement  also  for 
His  own  sake, — as  a  temptation  to  Himself  and  fraught 
with  evil  effects  upon  His  feelings.  We  know  that  it  is 
for  this  reason  we  have  to  shun  it.  Even  though  we  are 
quite  guiltless  of  contributing  to  such  publication  our- 
selves, and  it  is  the  work  of  generous  and  well-meaning 
friends,  it  still  becomes  a  very  great  danger  to  us.  For 
it  is  apt  to  fever  us  and  exhaust  our  nervous  force, 
even  when  it  does  not  turn  our  heads  with  its  praise, — 


xlii.  1-7.]         THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  305 

to  distract  us  and  to  draw  us  more  and  more  into 
the  enervating  habit  of  paying  attention  to  popular 
opinion.  Therefore,  as  a  man  values  his  efficiency  in 
the  Service  of  Man,  he  will  not  make  himself  to  be  heard 
in  the  street.  There  is  an  amount  of  making  to  be  heard 
which  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  work's  sake  ; 
but  there  is  also  an  amount  which  can  be  indulged  in 
only  at  the  work's  expense.  Present-day  philanthropy, 
even  with  the  best  intentions,  suffers  from  this  over- 
publicity,  and  its  besetting  sins  are  "loudness"  and 
hysteria. 

What,  then,  shall  tell  us  how  far  we  can  go  ?  What 
shall  teach  us  how  to  be  eloquent  without  screaming, 
clear  without  being  loud,  impressive  without  wasting 
our  strength  in  seeking  to  make  an  impression  ? 
These  questions  bring  us  back  to  what  we  started 
with,  as  the  indispensable  requisite  for  Service — some 
guiding  and  religious  principles  behind  even  the  kind- 
liest and  steadiest  tempers.  For  many  things  in  the 
Service  of  Man  no  exact  rules  will  avail;  neither  logic 
nor  bye-laws  of  administration  can  teach  us  to  observe 
the  uncertain  and  constantly  varying  degree  of  dutyi 
which  they  demand.  Tact  for  that  is  bestowed  only  by 
the  influence  of  lofty  principles  working  from  above* 
This  is  a  case  in  point.  What  rules  of  logic  or 
"directions  of  the  superior  authority"  can,  in  the 
Service  of  Man,  distinguish  for  us  between  excitement 
and  earnestness,  bluster  and  eloquence,  energy  and 
mere  self-advertisement ;  on  whose  subtle  differences 
the  whole  success  of  the  service  must  turn.  Only  the 
discipline  of  faith,  only  the  sense  of  God,  can  help  us 
here.  The  practical  temper  by  itself  will  not  help  us. 
To  be  busy  but  gives  us  too  great  self-importance ;  and 
hard  work  often  serves  only  to  bring  out  the  combative 

VOL.    II.  20 


3o6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

instincts.  To  know  that  we  are  His  Servants  shall 
keep  us  meek;  that  we  are  held  fast  by  His  hand 
shall  keep  us  calm;  that  His  great  laws  are  not  abro- 
gated shall  keep  us  sane.  When  for  our  lowliest  and 
most  commonplace  kinds  of  service  we  think  no  reli- 
gion is  required,  let  us  remember  the  solemn  introduc- 
tion of  the  evangelist  to  his  story  of  the  foot-washing. 
Jesus  knowing  that  the  Father  had  given  all  things  into  His 
hands,  and  that  He  came  forth  from  God  and  goeth  unto 
God,  risethfrom  supper,  and  layeth  aside  His  garments ; 
and  He  took  a  toivel,  and  girded  Himself;  then  He 
poureth  water  into  the  bason,  and  began  to  wash  His 
disciples^  feet. 

2.  But  to  meekness  and  discipline  the  Servant  adds 
gentleness. 

Reed  that  is  broken  he  breaks  not  off, 
Wick  that  is  fading  he  does  not  quench; 
Faithfully  brings  he  forth  law. 

The  force  of  the  last  of  these  three  lines  is,  of 
course,  quaHficative  and  conditional.  It  is  set  as  a 
guard  against  the  abuse  of  the  first  two,  and  means 
that  though  the  Servant  in  dealing  with  men  is  to 
be  solicitous  about  their  weakness,  yet  the  interests 
of  religion  shall  in  no  way  suffer.  Mercy  shall  be 
practised,  but  so  that  truth  is  not  compromised. 

The  original  application  of  the  verse  is  thus  finely 
stated  by  Professor  Davidson  :  "This  is  the  singularly 
humane  and  compassionate  view  the  Prophet  takes 
of  the  Gentiles, — they  are  bruised  reeds  and  expiring 
flames.  .  .  .  What  the  prophet  may  refer  to  is  the 
human  virtues,  expiring  among  the  nations,  but  not 
yet  dead  ;  the  sense  of  God,  debased  by  idolatries, 
but   not  extinct ;   the  consciousness  in  the  individual 


xlii.  1-7.]       THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  307 

soul  of  its  own  worth  and  its  capacities^  and  the  gh"m- 
mering  ideal  of  a  true  life  and  a  worthy  activity  almost 
crushed  out  by  the  grinding  tyranny  of  rulers  and  the 
miseries  entailed  by  their  ambitions — this  flickering 
light  the  Servant  shall  feed  and  blow  into  a  flame.*  .  .  . 
It  is  the  future  relation  of  the  *  people '  Israel  to  other 
peoples  that  he  describes.  The  thought  which  has  now 
taken  possession  of  statesmen  of  the  higher  class,  that 
the  point  of  contact  between  nation  and  nation  need 
not  be  the  sword,  that  the  advantage  of  one  people  is 
not  the  loss  of  another  but  the  gain  of  mankind,  that 
the  land  where  freedom  has  grown  to  maturity  and  is 
worshipped  in  her  virgin  serenity  and  loveliness  should 
nurse  the  new-born  babe  in  other  homes,  and  that  the 
strange  powers  of  the  mind  of  man  and  the  subtle 
activities  of  his  hand  should  not  be  repressed  but 
fostered  in  every  people,  in  order  that  the  product  may 
be  poured  into  the  general  lap  of  the  race — this  idea  is 
supposed  to  be  due  to  Christianity.  And,  immediately, 
it  is ;  but  it  is  older  than  Christianity.  It  is  found  in 
this  Prophet.  And  it  is  not  new  in  him,  for  a  Prophet, 
presumably  a  century  and  a  half  his  senior,  had  said  : 
The  remnant  of  Jacob  shall  be  in  the  midst  of  many 
peoples  as  a  dew  from  the  Lord,  as  showers  upon  the 
grass  (Micah  v.  7)."  f 

But  while  this  national  reference  may  be  the  one 
originally  meant,  the  splendid  vagueness  of  the  metaphor 
forbids  us  to  be  content  with  it,  or  with  any  solitary 
application.  For  the  two  clauses  are  as  the  eyes  of  the 
All-Pitiful  Father,  that  rest  wherever  on  this  broad  earth 
there  is  any  Hfe,  though  it  be  so  low  as  to  be  conscious 
only  through  pain  or  doubt;  they  are  as  the  healing 

*  Expositor,  second  series,  viii.,  pp.  364,  365,  366,       f  Ibid.,  p.  366. 


3o8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

palms  of  Jesus  stretched  over  the  multitudes  to  bless 
and  gather  to  Himself  the  weary  and  the  poor  in  spirit. 
We  contrast  our  miserable  ruin  of  character,  our  feeble 
sparks  of  desire  after  holiness,  with  the  life,  which 
Christ  demands  and  has  promised,  and  in  despair  we 
tell  ourselves,  this  can  never  become  that.  But  it  is 
precisely  this  that  Christ  has  come  to  lift  to  that.  The 
first  chapter  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  closes  with 
the  awful  command,  Be  ye  perfect,  as  your  Father  in 
Heaven  is  perfect ;  but  we  work  our  way  back  through 
the  chapter,  and  we  come  to  this,  Blessed  are  they  that 
hunger  and  thirst  after  righteousness ,  for  they  shall  be 
filled ;  and  to  this.  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit,  for 
theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Such  is  Christ's  treat- 
ment of  the  bruised  reed  and  the  smoking  flax.  Let 
us  not  despair.  There  is  only  one  kind  of  men,  for 
whom  it  has  no  gospel, — the  dead  and  they  who  are 
steeped  in  worldliness,  who  have  forgotten  what  the 
pain  of  a  sore  conscience  is,  and  are  strangers  to 
humihty  and  aspiration.  But  for  all  who  know  their 
life,  were  it  only  through  their  pain  or  their  doubt, 
were  it  only  in  the  despair  of  what  they  feel  to  be  a 
last  struggle  with  temptation,  were  it  only  in  contrition 
for  their  sin  or  in  shame  for  their  uselessness,  this 
text  has  hope.  Reed  that  is  broken  he  breaketh  not 
off,  wick  that  is  fading  he  doth  not  quench. 

This  objective  sense  of  the  Servant's  temper  must 
always  be  the  first  for  us  to  understand.  For  more 
than  he  was,  we  are,  mortal,  ready  ourselves  to  break 
and  to  fade.  But  having  experienced  the  grace,  let  us 
show  the  same  in  our  service  to  others.  Let  us  under- 
stand that  we  are  sent  forth  like  the  great  Servant  of 
God,  that  man  may  have  life,  and  have  it  more  abun- 
dantly.     We  need  resolutely  and  with  pious  obstinacy 


xlii.  1-7.]       THE  SERVICE  OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  309 

to  set  this  temper  before  us,  for  it  is  not  natural  to  oui 
hearts.  Even  the  best  of  us,  in  the  excitement  of  our 
work,  forget  to  think  of  anything  except  of  making 
our  mark,  or  of  getting  the  better  of  what  we  are  at  work 
upon.  When  work  grows  hard,  the  combative  instincts 
waken  within  us,  till  we  look  upon  the  characters  God 
has  given  us  to  mould  as  enemies  to  be  fought.  We 
are  passionate  to  convince  men,  to  overcome  them  with 
an  argument,  to  wring  the  confession  from  them  that 
we  are  right  and  they  wrong.  Now  Christ  our  Master 
must  have  seen  in  every  man  He  met  a  very  great  deal 
more  to  be  fought  and  extirpated  than  we  can  possibly 
see  in  one  another.  Yet  He  largely  left  that  alone,  and 
addressed  Himself  rather  to  the  sparks  of  nobility  He 
found,  and  fostered  these  to  a  strong  life,  which  from 
within  overcame  the  badness  of  the  man, — the  badness 
which  opposition  from  the  outside  would  but  have  beaten 
into  harder  obduracy.  We  must  ever  remember  that 
we  are  not  warriors  but  artists, — artists  after  the  fashion 
of  Jesus  Christ,  who  came  not  to  condemn  life  because 
it  was  imperfect,  but  to  build  Hfe  up  to  the  image  of  God. 
So  He  sends  us  to  be  artists ;  as  it  is  written,  He  gave 
some  apostles,  and  some  prophets,  and  some  pastors  and 
teachers.  For  what  end  ?  For  convincing  men,  for 
telling  them  what  fools  they  mostly  are,  for  crushing 
them  in  the  inquisition  of  their  own  conscience,  for 
getting  the  better  of  them  in  argument  ? — no,  not  for 
these  combative  purposes  at  all,  but  for  fostering  and 
artistic  ones :  for  the  perfecting  of  the  saints,  for  the 
building  up  of  the  body  of  Christ ;  till  we  all  come  unto  a 
full  grown  man,  unto  the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the 
fulness  of  Christ. 

iHe  who,  in  his  Service  of  Man,  practises  such  a  temper 
towards  the  breaking  and  the  fading,  shall  never  himself 


310  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

break  or  fade,  as  this  prophecy  impHes  when  it  uses  the 
same  verbs  in  verses  three  and  four.  For  he  who  is 
loyal  to  life  shall  find  life  generous  to  him ;  he  who  is 
careful  of  weakness  shall  never  want  for  strength. 


IV.  The  Power  behind  Service. 

There  only  remains  now  to  emphasize  the  power  that 
is  behind  Service.  It  is,  say  verses  five  and  stx^  the 
Creative  Power  of  God. 

Thus  saith  The  God,  Jehovah, 

Creator  of  the  heavens,  that  stretched  them  forthy 

Spreader  of  the  earth  and  her  produce y 

Giver  of  breath  to  the  people  upon  her. 

And  of  spirit  to  them  that  walk  thereon, 

I  Jehovah  have  called  thee  in  righteousness, 

That  I  may  grasp  thee  by  thy  hand,  and  keep  thee. 

Majestic  confirmation  of  the  call  to  Service  !  based 
upon  the  fundamental  granite  of  this  whole  prophecy, 
which  here  crops  out  into  a  noble  peak,  firm  station 
for  the  Servant,  and  point  for  prospect  of  all  the  future. 
It  is  our  easy  fault  to  read  these  words  of  the  Creator  as 
the  utterance  of  mere  ceremonial  commonplace,  blast  of 
trumpets  at  the  going  forth  of  a  hero,  scenery  for  his 
stage,  the  pomp  of  nature  summoned  to  assist  at  the 
presentation  of  God's  elect  before  the  world.  Yet  not  for 
splendour  were  they  spoken,  but  for  bare  faith's  sake. 
God's  Servant  has  been  sent  forth,  weak  and  gentle, 
with  quiet  methods  and  to  very  slow  effects.  He  shall 
not  cry,  nor  lift  up,  nor  make  his  voice  to  be  heard  in  the 
streets.    What  chance  has  such,  our  service,  in  the  ways 


xlii.  1-7.]        THE  SERVICE   OF  GOD  AND  MAN.  311 

of  the  world,  where  to  be  forceful  and  selfish,  to  bluster 
and  battle,  is  to  survive  and  overcome  !  So  we  speak, 
and  the  panic  ambition  rises  to  fight  the  world  with  its 
own  weapons,  and  to  employ  the  kinds  of  debate,  ad- 
vertisement and  competition  by  which  the  world  goes 
forward.  For  this,  the  Creator  calls  to  us,  and  marshals 
His  powers  before  our  eyes.  We  thought  there  were 
but  two  things, — our  own  silence  and  the  world's  noise. 
There  are  three,  and  the  world's  noise  is  only  an  inter- 
ruption between  the  other  two.  Across  it  deep  calleth 
unto  deep  ;  the  immeasurable  processes  of  creation  cry 
to  the  feeble  convictions  of  truth  in  our  hearts,  We  are 
one.  Creation  is  the  certificate  that  no  moral  effort  is 
a  forlorn  hope.  When  God,  after  repeating  His  results 
in  creation,  adds,  I  have  called  thee  in  righteousness^ 
He  means  that  there  is  some  consistency  between  His 
processes  in  creation,  rational  and  immense  as  they 
are,  and  those  poor  efforts  He  calls  on  our  weakness 
to  make,  which  look  so  foolish  in  face  of  the  world. 
Behind  every  moral  effort  there  is,  He  says,  Creative 
force.  Right  and  Might  are  ultimately  one.  Paul  sums 
up  the  force  of  the  passage,  when,  after  speaking  of  the 
success  of  his  ministry,  he  gives  as  its  reason  that  the 
God  of  Creation  and  of  Grace  are  the  same.  Therefore 
seeing  we  have  received  this  ministry  we  faint  not.  For 
God,  who  hath  commanded  the  light  to  shine  out  of  dark- 
ness, hath  shined  in  cur  hearts,  to  give  the  light  of  the 
knowledge  of  God  in  the  face  offesus  Christ. 

The  spiritual  Service  of  Man,  then,  has  creative  forces 
behind  it ;  work  for  God  upon  the  hearts  and  characters 
of  others  has  creative  force  behind  it.  And  nature  is 
the  seal  and  the  sacrament  of  this.  Let  our  souls, 
therefore,  dilate  with  her  prospects.  Let  our  impatience 
study  her  reasonableness  and  her  laws.     Let  our  weak 


312  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

wills  feel  the  rush  of  her  tides.  For  the  power  that  is 
in  her,  and  the  faithful  pursuance  of  purposes  to  their 
ends,  are  the  power  and  the  character  that  work  behind 
each  witness  of  our  conscience,  each  effort  of  our  heart 
for  others.  Not  less  strong  than  she,  not  less  calm,  not 
less  certain  of  success,  shall  prove  the  moral  Service 
of  Man. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

PROPHET  AND  MARTYR, 
Isaiah  xlix.  1-9;  1.  4-1 1. 

THE  second  great  passage  upon  the  Servant  of  the 
Lord  is  ch.  xlix.  1-9,  and  the  third  is  ch.  1.  4-1 1. 
In  both  of  these  the  servant  himself  speaks  ;  in  both  he 
speaks  as  prophet ;  while  in  the  second  he  tells  us  that 
his  prophecy  leads  him  on  to  martyrdom.  The  two 
passages  may,  therefore,  be  taken  together. 

Before  we  examine  their  contents,  let  us  look  for  a 
moment  at  the  way  in  which  they  are  woven  into  the 
rest  of  the  text.  As  we  have  seen,  ch.  xlix.  begins  a 
new  section  of  the  prophecy,  in  so  far  that  with  it  the 
prophet  leaves  Babylon  and  Cyrus  behind  him,  and 
ceases  to  speak  of  the  contrast  between  God  and  the 
idols.  But,  still,  ch.  xlix.  is  linked  to  ch.  xlviii.  In 
leading  up  to  its  climax, — the  summons  to  Israel  to 
depart  from  Babylon, — ch.  xlviii.  does  not  forget  that 
Israel  is  delivered  from  Babylon  in  order  to  be  the 
Servant  of  Jehovah  :  say  ye,  Jehovah  hath  redeemed  His 
Servant  Jacob.  It  is  this  service,  which  ch.  xlix.  carries 
forward  from  the  opportunity,  and  the  call,  to  go  forth 
from  Babylon,  with  which  ch.  xlviii.  closes.  That  oppor- 
tunity, though  real,  does  not  at  all  mean  that  Israel's 
redemption  is  complete.  There  were  many  moral 
reasons  which  prevented  the  whole  nation  from  taking 


314  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

full  advantage  of  the  political  freedom  offered  them  by 
Cyrus.  Although  the  true  Israel,  that  part  of  the  nation 
which  has  the  conscience  of  service,  has  shaken  itself 
free  from  the  temptation  as  well  as  from  the  tyranny  of 
Babel,  and  now  sees  the  world  before  it  as  the  theatre 
of  its  operations, — ver.  i,  Heai'ken,  ye  isles,  unto  Me;  and 
listen,  ye  peoples,  from  far, — it  has  still,  before  it  can 
address  itself  to  that  universal  mission,  to  exhort,  rouse 
and  extricate  the  rest  of  its  nation,  saying  to  the  bounden, 
Go  forth;  and  to  them  that  are  in  darkness.  Show  your- 
selves (ver.  9).  Ch.  xlix.,  therefore,  is  the  natural  deve- 
lopment of  ch.  xlviii.  There  is  certainly  a  little  interval 
of  time  implied  between  the  two — the  time  during  which 
it  became  apparent  that  the  opportunity  to  leave  Babylon 
would  not  be  taken  advantage  of  by  all  Israel,  and  that 
the  nation's  redemption  must  be  a  moral  as  well  as 
a  political  one.  But  ch.  xlix.  1-9  comes  out  of  chs. 
xl.-xlviii.,  and  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  in  it  we 
are  not  still  under  the  influence  of  the  same  author. 

A  similar  coherence  is  apparent  if  we  look  to  the 
other  end  of  ch.  xlix.  1-9.  Here  it  is  evident  that 
Jehovah's  commission  to  the  Servant  concludes  with 
ver.  9«  ;  but  then  its  closing  words.  Say  to  the  bound,  Go 
forth;  to  them  that  are  in  darkness,  Show  yourselves,  start 
fresh  thoughts  about  the  redeemed  on  their  way  back 
(vv.  9^-13)  ;  and  these  thoughts  naturally  lead  on  to  a 
picture  of  Jerusalem  imagining  herself  forsaken,  and 
amazed  by  the  appearance  of  so  many  of  her  children 
before  her  (vv.  14-21).  Promises  to  her  and  to  them 
follow  in  due  sequence  down  to  ch.  1.  3,  when  the 
Servant  resumes  his  soliloquy  about  himself,  but 
abruptly,  and  in  no  apparent  connection  with  what 
immediately  precedes.  His  soliloquy  ceases  in  ver.  9, 
and  another  voice,  probably  that  of  God  Himself,  urges 


xlix.  1-9;  1.4-11]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  315 

obedience  to  the  Servant  (ver.  10),  and  judgement  to 
the  sinners  in  Israel  (ver.  il) ;  and  ch.  li.  is  an  address 
to  the  spiritual  Israel,  and  to  Jerusalem,  with  thoughts 
much  the  same  as  those  uttered  in  xlix.  14-I.  3. 

In  face  of  these  facts,  and  taking  into  consideration 
the  dramatic  form  in  which  the  whole  prophecy  is  cast, 
we  find  ourselves  unable  to  say  that  there  is  anything 
which  is  incompatible  with  a  single  authorship,  or  which 
makes  it  impossible  for  the  two  passages  on  the 
Servant  to  have  originally  sprung,  each  at  the  place  at 
which  it  now  stands,  from  the  progress  of  the  prophet's 
thoughts.* 


Babylon  is  left  behind,  and  the  way  of  the  Lord  is 
prepared  in  the  desert.  Israel  have  once  more  the 
title-deeds  to  their  own  land,  and  Zion  looms  in  sight. 
Yet  with  their  face  to  home,  and  their  heart  upon 
freedom,  the  voice  of  this  people,  or  at  least  of  the 
better  half  of  this  people,  rises  first  upon  the  conscience 
of  their  duty  to  the  rest  of  mankind. 

Hearken^  O  IsleSy  unto  Me; 
And  listen,  O  Peoples,  from  far  ! 
From  the  womb  Jehovah  hath  called  me, 
From  my  mother^ s  midst  mentioned  my  name. 
And  He  set  my  mouth  like  a  sharp  sword. 
In  the  shadow  of  His  hand  did  He  hide  me  ; 
Yea,  He  made  me  a  pointed  arrow. 
In  His  quiver  He  laid  me  in  store, 
And  said  to  me.  My  Servant  art  thou, 
Israel,  in  whom  I  shall  break  into  glory, 

4  ~~" 

*  This,  of  course,  goes  against  Prof.  Briggs's  theory  of  the  composi- 
tion of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.  out  of  two  poems  (see  p.  18). 
t  This  hne  is  full  of  the  letter  m. 


3i6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

And  I — /  said^  In  vain  have  I  labouredy 

For  waste  and  for  wind  my  strength  have  I  spent  I 

Surely  my  rigMs  with  Jehovah^ 

And  the  meed  of  my  work  with  my  God  ! 

But  now,  saith  Jehovah — 

Moulding  me  from  the  womb  to  be  His  own  Servant, 

To  turn  again  Jacob  towards  Him, 

And  that  Israel  be  not  destroyed.^ 

And  I  am  of  honour  in  the  eyes  of  Jehovah, 

And  my  God  is  my  strength  ! 

And  He  saith, 

*Tis  too  light  for  thy  being  My  Servant, 

To  raise  up  the  tribes  of  Jacob, 

Or  gather  the  survivors  oj  Israel. 

So  I  will  set  thee  a  light  of  the  Nations, 

To  be  My  salvation  to  the  end  of  the  earth. 

Thus  saith  Jehovah, 

Israel's  Redeemer,  his  Holy, 

To   this   mockery  of  a   life,  abhorrence  of  a  nation, 

servant  of  tyrants,  \ 
Kings  shall  behold  and  shall  stand  up, 
Princes  shall  also  do  homage. 

For  the  sake  of  Jehovah,  who  shows  Himself  faithful, 
Holy  of  Israel,  and  thou  art  His  chosen. 


*  This  is  as  the  text  is  written ;  but  the  Massoretic  reading  gives, 
that  Israel  to  Hiin  may  be  gathered. 

f  So  it  seems  best  to  give  the  sense  of  this  difficult  line,  but  most 
translators  render  despised  of  soul,  or  thoroughly  despised,  abhorred  by 
peoples,  or  by  a  people,  etc.  The  word  for  despised  is  used  elsewhere 
only  in  ch.  liii.  3. 


xlix.  1-9.-]  PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  31? 

Thus  saith  Jehovah, 

In  a  favourable  time  I  have  given  thee  answer ^ 

In  the  day  of  salvation  have  helped  thee, 

To  keep  thee,  to  give  thee  for  covenant  of  the  people, 

To  raise  up  the  land, 

To  give  back  the  heirs  to  the  desolate  heirdoms^ 

Saying  to  the  bounden,  Go  forth  ! 

To  them  that  are  in  darkness,  Appear  ! 

"  Who  is  so  blind  as  not  to  perceive  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  Servant  here  is  only  a  mirror  in  which 
the  history  of  Israel  is  reflected — first,  in  its  original  call 
and  design  that  Jehovah  should  be  glorified  in  it;  second, 
in  the  long  delay  and  apparent  failure  of  the  design ; 
and,  thirdly,  as  the  design  is  now  in  the  present  junc- 
ture of  circumstances  and  concurrence  of  events  about 
to  be  realized?"*  Yes  :  but  it  is  Israel's  calling,  native 
insufficiency,  and  present  duty,  as  owned  by  only  a  part 
of  the  people,  which,  though  named  by  the  national  name 
(ver.  3),  feels  itself  standing  over  against  the  bulk  of  the 
nation,  whose  redemption  it  is  called  to  work  out  (vv.  8 
and  9)  before  it  takes  up  its  world-wide  service.  We 
have  already  sufficiently  discussed  this  distinction  of  the 
Servant  from  the  whole  nation,  as  well  as  the  distinction 
of  the  moral  work  he  has  to  effect  in  Israel's  redemption 
from  Babylon,  from  the  pohtical  enfranchisement  of  the 
nation,  which  is  the  work  of  Cyrus.  Let  us,  then,  at 
once  address  ourselves  to  the  main  features  of  his  con- 
sciousness of  his  mission  to  mankind.  We  shall  find 
these  features  to  be  three.  The  Servant  owns  for  his 
chief  end  the  glory  of  God ;  and  he  feels  that  he  has  to 
glorify  God  in  two  ways — by  Speech,  and  by  Suffering. 


*  Prof.  A.  B,  Davidson,  Expositor,  Second  Series,  viii.,  441. 


3i8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


I,  The  Servant  glorifies  God. 

He  did  say  to  me,  My  servant  art  thou, 
Israel,  in  whom  I  shall  break  into  glory. 

The  Hebrew  verb,  which  the  Authorised  Version  trans- 
lates will  be  glorified,  means  to  burst  forth,  become  visible, 
break  like  the  dawn  into  splendour.  This  is  the  scrip- 
tural sense  of  Glory.  Glory  is  God  become  visible.  As 
we  put  it  in  Volume  I.,*  glory  is  the  expression  of  holi- 
ness, as  beauty  is  the  expression  of  health.  But,  in 
order  to  become  visible,  the  Absolute  and  Holy  God 
needs  mortal  man.  We  have  felt  something  like  a 
paradox  in  these  prophecies.  Nowhere  else  is  God 
lifted  up  so  absolute,  and  so  able  to  effect  all  by  His 
mere  will  and  word ;  yet  nowhere  else  is  a  human  agency 
and  service  so  strongly  asserted  as  indispensable  to  the 
Divine  purpose.  But  this  is  no  more  a  paradox,  than 
the  fact  that  physical  light  needs  some  material  in  which 
to  become  visible.  Light  is  never  revealed  of  itself,  but 
always  when  shining  from,  or  burning  in,  something 
else.  To  be  seen,  light  requires  a  surface  that  will 
reflect,  or  a  substance  that  will  consume.  And  so,  to 
break  into  glory,  God  requires  something  outside  Him- 
self. A  responsive  portion  of  humanity  is  indispensable 
to  Him, — a  people  who  will  reflect  Him  and  spend  itself 
for  Him.  Man  is  the  mirror  and  the  wick  of  the  Divine. 
God  is  glorified  in  man's  character  and  witness, — these 
are  His  mirror;  and  in  man's  sacrifice, — that  is  His 
wick. 

And  so  we  meet  again  the  central  truth  of  our 
prophecy,  that  in  order  to  serve  men   it  is  necessary 

*  Page  68. 


xlix.  1-9;  1.4-II.]       PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  319 

first  to  be  used  of  God.  We  must  place  ourselves  at 
the  disposal  of  the  Divine,  v^-e  must  let  God  shine  on  us 
and  kindle  us,  and  break  into  glory  through'  us,  before 
v^^e  can  hope  either  to  comfort  mankind  or  to  set  them 
on  fire.  It  is  true  that  ideas  very  different  from  this 
prevail  among  the  ranks  of  the  servants  of  humanity  in 
our  day.  A  large  part  of  our  most  serious  literature 
professes  for  "  its  main  bearing  this  conclusion,  that  the 
fellowship  between  man  and  man,  which  has  been  the 
principle  of  development,  social  and  moral,  is  not  de- 
pendent upon  conceptions  of  what  is  not  man,  and  that 
the  idea  of  God,  so  far  as  it  has  been  a  high  spiritual 
influence,  is  the  ideal  of  a  goodness  entirely  human."  * 
But  such  theories  are  possible  only  so  long  as  the  still 
unexhausted  influence  of  religion  upon  society  continues 
to  supply  human  nature,  directly  or  indirectly,  with 
a  virtue  which  may  be  plausibly  claimed  for  human 
nature's  own  original  product.  Let  religion  be  entirely 
withdrawn,  and  the  question.  Whence  comes  virtue  ? 
will  be  answered  by  virtue  ceasing  to  come  at  all.  The 
savage  imagines  that  it  is  the  burning-glass  which  sets 
the  bush  on  fire,  and  as  long  as  the  sun  is  shining  it 
may  be  impossible  to  convince  him  that  he  is  wrong ; 
but  a  dull  day  will  teach  even  his  mind  that  the  glass 
can  do  nothing  without  the  sun  upon  it.  And  so, 
though  men  may  talk  glibly  against  God,  while  society 
still  shines  in  the  light  of  His  countenance,  yet,  if  they 
and  society  resolutely  withdraw  themselves  from  that 
light,  they  shall  certainly  lose  every  heat  and  lustre  of 
the  spirit  which  is  indispensable   for  social  service,  f 


*  So  George  Eliot  wrote  of  her  own  writings  shortly  before  her 
death.     See  Life,  iii.,  245. 

•j-  Lady  Ponsonby,  to  whom  George  Eliot  wrote  the  letter  quoted 


320  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH, 

On  this  the  ancient  Greek  was  at  one  with  the  ancient 
Hebrew.  Enthusiasm  is  just  God  breaking  into  glory 
through  a  human  life.  Here  lies  the  secret  of  the 
buoyancy  and  *'  freshness  of  the  earlier  world,"  whether 
pagan  or  Hebrew,  and  by  this  may  be  understood  the 
depression  and  pessimism  which  infects  modern  society. 
They  had  God  in  their  blood,  and  we  are  anaemic. 
But  /,  /  said^  I  have  laboured  in  vain;  for  waste  and  for 
wind  have  I  spent  my  strength.  We  must  all  say  that, 
if  our  last  word  is  our  strength.  But  let  this  not  be 
our  last  word.  Let  us  remember  the  sufficient  answer : 
Surely  my  right  is  with  the  Lord,  and  the  meed  of  my 
work  with  my  God.  We  are  set,  not  in  our  own  strength 
or  for  our  own  advantage,  but  with  the  hand  of  God 
upon  us,  and  that  the  Divine  life  may  break  into  glory 
through  our  life.  Carlyle  said,  and  it  was  almost  his 
last  testimony,  "  The  older  I  grow,  and  I  am  now  on 
the  brink  of  eternity,  the  more  comes  back  to  me  the 
first  sentence  of  the  catechism,  which  I  learned  when  a 
child,  and  the  fuller  does  its  meaning  grow — '  What  is 
the  chief  end  of  man  ?  Man's  chief  end  is  to  glorify 
God  and  enjoy  Him  for  ever.' " 


It  was  said  above,  that,  as  light  breaks  to  visibleness 
either  from  a  mirror  or  a  wick,  so  God  breaks  to  glory 
cither  from  the  witness  of  men, — that  is  His  mirror, — 
or  from  their  sacrifice — that  is  His  wick.  Of  both  of 
these  ways  of  glorifying  God  is  the  Servant  conscious. 
His^  service  is  Speech  and  Sacrifice,  Prophecy  and 
Martyrdom. 

above,  confessed  that,  with  the  disappearance  of  religious  faith  from 
her  soul,  there  vanished  also  the  power  of  interest  in,  and  of  pity  for, 
her  kind. 


xlix.  1-9;  1.4-11.]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  321 


II.  The  Servant  as  Prophet. 

Concerning  his  service  of  Speech,  the  Servant  speaks 
in  these  two  passages — ch.  xHx.  2  and  1.  4-5  : 

He  set  my  mouth  like  a  sharp  sword, 

In  the  shadow  of  His  hand  did  He  hide  me. 

And  made  me  a  pointed  arrow; 

In  His  quiver  He  laid  me  in  store. 

My  Lord  Jehovah  hath  given  me 

The  tongue  of  the  learners^ 
To  know  how  to  succour  the  weary  with  words. 
He   wakeneth   morning  by  morning^  He  wakeneth 
mine  ear 

To  hear  as  the  learners. 
My  Lord  Jehovah  hath  opened  mine  ear. 

I  was  not  rebellious, 

Nor  turned  away  backward. 

At  the  bidding  of  our  latest  prophet  we  have  become 
suspicious  of  the  power  of  speech,  and  the  goddess  of 
eloquence  walks,  as  it  were,  under  surveillance  among 
us.  Carlyle  reiterated,  ^^All  speech  and  rumour  is 
short-lived,  foolish,  untrue.  Genuine  work  alone  is 
eternal.  The  talent  of  silence  is  our  fundamental  one. 
The  dumb  nations  are  the  builders  of  the  world." 
Under  such  doctrine  some  have  grown  intolerant  of 
words,  and  the  ideal  of  to-day  tends  to  become  the 
practical  man  rather  than  the  prophet.  Yet,  as  some- 
body has  said,  Carlyle  makes  us-  dissatisfied  with 
preaching  only  by  preaching  himself;  and  you  have 
but  to  read  him  with  attention  to  discover  that  his 
disgust  with  human  speech  is  consistent  with  an  im- 
mense  reverence    for   the   voice   as   an  instrument  of 

VOL.   II.  21 


■yil  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

service  to  humanity.  ''  The  tongue  of  man,"  he  says, 
'*is  a  sacred  organ.  Man  himself  is  definable  in 
philosophy  as  an  '  Incarnate  Word ; '  the  Word  not 
there,  you  have  no  man  there  either,  but  a  Phantasm 
instead." 

Let  us  examine  our  ovi^n  experience  upon  the  merits 
of  this  debate  between  Silence  and  Speech  in  the  service 
of  man.  Though  beginning  low,  it  will  help  us  quickly 
to  the  height  of  the  experience  of  the  Prophet  Nation, 
who,  with  nought  else  for  the  world  but  the  voice  that 
was  in  them,  accomplished  the  greatest  service  that  the 
world  has  ever  received  from  her  children. 

One  thing  is  certain, — that  Speech  has  not  the 
monopoly  of  falsehood  or  of  any  other  presumptuous 
sin.  Silence  does  not  only  mean  ignorance, — by  some 
supposed  to  be  the  heaviest  sin  of  which  Silence  can  be 
guilty, — but  many  things  far  worse  than  ignorance,  like 
unreadiness,  and  cowardice,  and  falsehood,  and  treason, 
and  base  consent  to  what  is  evil.  No  man  can  look 
back  on  his  past  life,  however  lowly  or  limited  his 
sphere  may  have  been,  and  fail  to  see  that  not  once  or 
twice  his  supreme  duty  was  a  word,  and  his  guilt  was 
not  to  have  spoken  it.  We  all  have  known  the  shame 
of  being  straitened  in  prayer  or  praise ;  the  shame  of 
being,  through  our  cowardice  to  bear  witness,  traitors 
to  the  truth ;  the  shame  of  being  too  timid  to  say  No 
to  the  tempter,  and  speak  out  the  brave  reasons  of 
which  the  heart  was  full ;  the  shame  of  finding  our- 
selves incapable  of  uttering  the  word  that  would  have 
kept  a  soul  from  taking  the  wrong  turning  in  life ;  the 
shame,  when  truth,  clearness  and  authority  were  re- 
quired from  us,  of  being  able  only  to  stammer  or  to 
mince  or  to  rant.  To  have  been  dumb  before  the  ignorant 
or  the  dying,  before  a  questioning  child  or  before  the 


xllx.  1-9;  I.4-11.]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  323 

tempter, — this,  the  frequent  experience  of  our  common 
life,  is  enough  to  justify  Carlyle  when  he  said,  "  If  the 
Word  is  not  there,  you  have  no  man  there  either,  but  a 
Phantasm  instead." 

Now,  when  we  look  within  ourselves  we  see  the 
reason  of  this.  We  perceive  that  the  one  fact,  which 
amid  the  mystery  and  chaos  of  our  inner  life  gives  cer- 
tainty and  light,  is  a  fact  which  is  a  Voice.  Our  nature 
may  be  wrecked  and  dissipated,  but  conscience  is 
always  left ;  or  in  ignorance  and  gloom,  but  conscience 
is  always  audible ;  or  with  all  the  faculties  strong  and 
assertive,  yet  conscience  is  still  unquestionably  queen,— 
and  conscience  is  a  Voice.  It  is  a  still,  small  voice, 
which  is  the  surest  thing  in  man,  and  the  noblest ; 
which  makes  all  the  difference  in  his  life ;  which  lies  at 
the  back  and  beginning  of  all  his  character  and  conduct. 
And  the  most  indispensable,  and  the  grandest  service, 
therefore,  which  a  man  can  do  his  fellow-men,  is  to  get 
back  to  this  voice,  and  make  himself  its  mouthpiece 
and  its  prophet.  What  work  is  possible  till  the  word 
be  spoken  ?  Did  ever  order  come  to  social  life  before 
there  was  first  uttered  the  command,  in  which  men 
felt  the  articulation  and  enforcement  of  the  ultimate 
voice  within  themselves  ?  Discipline  and  instruction 
and  energy  have  not  appeared  without  speech  going 
before  them.  Knowledge  and  faith  and  hope  do  not 
dawn  of  themselves  ;  they  travel,  as  light  issued  forth 
in  the  beginning,  upon  the  pulses  of  the  speaking 
breath. 

It  was  the  greatness  of  Israel  to  be  conscious  of 
their  call  as  a  nation  to  this  fundamental  service  of 
humanity.  Believing  in  the  Word  of  God  as  the 
original  source  of  all  things, — In  the  beginning  God  said, 
Let  there  be  light;  and  there  was  light, — they  had  the 


3^4  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

conscience,  that,  as  it  had  been  in  the  physical  world, 
so  must  it  always  be  in  the  moral.  Men  were  to  be 
served  and  their  lives  to  be  moulded  by  the  Word. 
God  was  to  be  glorified  by  letting  His  Word  break 
through  the  life  and  the  lips  of  men.  There  was  in  the 
Old  Testament,  it  is  true,  a  triple  ideal  of  manhood  : 
prophet,  priest  and  king.  But  the  greatest  of  these  was 
the  prophet,  for  king  and  priest  had  to  be  prophets  too. 
Eloquence  was  a  royal  virtue, — with  persuasion,  the 
power  of  command  and  swift  judgement.  Among  the 
seven  spirits  of  the  Lord  which  Isaiah  sees  descend- 
ing in  the  King-to-Come  is  the  spirit  of  counsel,  and 
he  afterwards  adds  of  the  King  :  He  shall  smite  the 
earth  with  the  rod  of  his  month,  and  with  the  breath  of  his 
lips  shall  he  slay  the  wicked.  Similarly,  the  priests  had 
originally  been  the  ministers,  not  so  much  of  sacrifice, 
as  of  the  revealed  Word  of  God.  And  now  the  new 
and  high  ideal  of  priesthood,  the  laying  down  of  one's 
life  a  sacrifice  for  God  and  for  the  people,  was  not  the 
mere  imitation  of  the  animal  victim  required  by  the 
priestly  law,  but  was  the  natural  development  of 
the  prophetic  experience.  It  was  (as  we  shall  pre- 
sently see)  the  prophet,  who,  in  his  inevitable  sufferings 
on  behalf  of  the  truth  he  uttered,  developed  that  con- 
sciousness of  sacrifice  for  others,  in  which  the  loftiest 
priesthood  consists.  Prophecy,  therefore,  the  Service 
of  Men  by  the  Word  of  God,  was  for  Israel  the 
highest  and  most  essential  of  all  service.  It  was  the 
individual's  and  it  was  the  nation's  ideal.  As  there 
was  no  true  king  and  no  true  priest,  so  there  was  no 
true  man,  without  the  Word.  Would  to  God,  said  Moses, 
that  all  the  Lora^s  people  were  prophets.  And  in  our 
prophecy  Israel  exclaims  :  Listen,  O  Isles,  unto  me;  and 
hearken,  ye  peoples  from  far.     He  hath  made  my  mouth 


xHx.  1-9;  1.4-1 1.]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  325 

, «^  ^ 

like  a  sharp  sword,  in  the  shadow  of  His  hand  hath 
He  hid  me. 

At  first  it  seems  a  forlorn  hope  thus  to  challenge  the 
attention  of  the  world  in  the  dialect  of  one  of  its  most 
obscure  provinces, — a  dialect,  too,  that  was  already 
ceasing  to  be  spoken  even  there.  But  the  fact  only 
serves  more  forcibly  to  emphasize  the  belief  of  these 
prophets,  that  the  word  committed  to  what  they  must 
have  known  to  be  a  dying  language  was  the  Word  of 
God  Himself, —  bound  to  render  immortal  the  tongue 
in  which  it  was  spoken,  bound  to  re-echo  to  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  bound  to  touch  the  conscience  and  com- 
mend itself  to  the  reason  of  universal  humanity.  We 
have  already  seen,  and  will  again  see,  how  our  prophet 
insists  upon  the  creative  and  omnipotent  power  of  God's 
Word  ;  so  we  need  not  dwell  longer  on  this  instance  of 
his  faith.  Let  us  look  rather  at  what  he  expresses  as 
Israel's  preparation  for  the  teaching  of  it. 

To  him  the  discipline  and  qualification  of  the  prophet 
nation — and  that  means,  of  every  Servant  of  God — in 
the  high  office  of  the  Word,  are  threefold. 

I.  First,  he  lays  down  the  supreme  condition  of 
Prophecy,  that  behind  the  Voice  there  must  be  the 
Life.  Before  he  speaks  of  his  gifts  of  Speech,  the 
Servant  emphasizes  his  peculiar  and  consecrated  life. 
From  the  womb  Jehovah  called  me,  from  my  mother^ s 
midst  mentioned  my  name.  Now,  as  we  all  know, 
Israel's  message  to  the  world  was  largely  Israel's 
life.  The  Old  Testament  is  not  a  set  of  dogmas, 
nor  a  philosophy,  nor  a  vision  ;  but  a  history,  the 
record  of  a  providence,  the  testimony  of  experience, 
the  utterances  called  forth  by  historical  occasions  from 
a  life  conscious  of  the  purpose  for  which  God  has  called 
it  and  set  it  apart  through  the  ages.     But  these  words, 


326  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

which  the  prophet  nation  uses,  were  first  used  of  an 
individual  prophet.  Like  so  much  else  in  "  Second 
Isaiah,"  we  find  a  suggestion  of  them  in  the  call  of 
Jeremiah.  Before  I  formed  thee  in  the  belly  I  knew  thee, 
and  before  thou  earnest  forth  from  the  womb  I  consecrated 
thee:  I  have  appointed  thee  a  prophet  unto  the  nations.'^ 
A  prophet  is  not  a  voice  only.  A  prophet  is  a  life 
behind  a  voice.  He  who  would  speak  for  God  must 
have  lived  for  God.  According  to  the  profound  insight 
of  the  Old  Testament,  speech  is  not  the  expression  of 
a  few  thoughts  of  a  man,  but  the  utterance  of  his  whole 
life.  A  man  blossoms  through  his  lips  ;  f  and  no  man 
is  a  prophet,  whose  word  is  not  the  virtue  and  the 
flower  of  a  gracious  and  a  consecrated  life. 

2.  The  second  discipline  of  the  prophet  is  the  Art  of 
Speech.  He  hath  made  my  mouth  like  a  sharp  sword,  in 
the  shadow  of  His  hand  hath  He  hid  me :  He  hath  made 
me  a  polished  shaft,  in  His  quiver  hath  He  laid  me  in 
store.  It  is  very  evident,  that  in  these  words  the 
Servant  does  not  only  recount  technical  qualifications, 
but  a  moral  discipline  as  well.  The  edge  and  brilHance 
of  his  speech  are  stated  as  the  effect  of  solitude,  but  of 
a  sohtude  that  was  at  the  same  time  a  nearness  to  God. 
Now  solitude  is  a  great  school  of  eloquence.  In  speak- 
ing of  the  Semitic  race,  of  which  Israel  was  part,  we 
pointed  out  that,  prophet- race  of  the  world  as  it  has 
proved,  it  sprang  from  the  desert,  and  nearly  all  its 
branches  have  inherited  the  desert's  clear  and  august 
style  of  speech  ;  for,  in  the  leisure  and  serene  air  of  the 
desert,  men  speak  as  they  speak  nowhere  else.  But 
Israel  speaks  of  a  solitude,  that  was  the  shadow  of 
God's  hand,  and  the  fastness  of  God's  quiver ;  a  seclu- 

*  Jer.  i.  5.  t  See  vol.  i.,  p.  70. 


xlix.  1-9;  I.4-11.]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  327 

sion,  which,  to  the  desert's  art  of  eloquence,  added  a 
special  inspiration  by  God,  and  a  special  concentration 
upon  His  main  purpose  in  the  world.  The  desert  sword 
felt  the  grasp  of  God  ;  He  laid  the  Semitic  shaft  in  store 
for  a  unique  end.* 

3.  But  in  ch.  1.,  vv.  4-5,  the  Servant  unfolds  the  most 
beautiful  and  true  understanding  of  the  Secret  of 
Prophecy,  that  ever  was  unfolded  in  any  literature, — 
worth  quoting  again  by  us,  if  so  we  may  get  it  by 
heart. 

My  Lord  Jehovah  hath  given  me 

The  tongue  of  the  learners^ 
To  know  how  to  succour  the  weary  with  words. 
He  wakeneth,  morning  by  morning  He  wakeneth  mine 
ear 

To  hear  as  the  learners. 
My  Lord  Jehovah  hath  opened  mine  ear^ 

I  was  not  rebellious^ 

Nor  turned  away  backward. 

The  prophet,  say  these  beautiful  lines,  learns  his 
speech,  as  the  little  child  does,  by  Hstening.  Grace  is 
poured  upon  the  lips  through  the  open  ear.  It  is  the 
lesson  of  our  Lord's  Ephphatha.  When  He  took  the 
deaf  man  with  the  impediment  in  his  speech  aside 
from  the  multitude  privately.  He  said  unto  him,  not. 
Be  loosed,  but,  Be  opened;  and  first  his  ears  were  opened^ 
and  then  the  bond  of  his  tongue  was  loosed,  and  he  spake 
plain.  To  speak,  then,  the  prophet  must  Hsten;  but 
mark  to  what  he  must  listen  !  The  secret  of  his 
eloquence  lies  not  in  the  hearing  of  thunder,  nor  in  the 
knowledge  of  mysteries,  but  in  a  daily  wakefulness  to 

*  See  p.  240  f. 


328  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  lessons  and  experience  of  common  life.  Morning 
by  morning  He  openeth  mine  ear.  This  is  very  charac- 
teristic of  Hebrew  prophecy  and  Hebrew  wisdom,  which 
listened  for  the  truth  of  God  in  the  voices  of  each 
day,  drew  their  parables  from  things  the  rising  sun 
lights  up  to  every  wakeful  eye,  and  were,  in  the  bulk 
of  their  doctrine,  the  virtues,  needed  day  by  day,  of 
justice,  temperance  and  mercy,  and  in  the  bulk  of  their 
judgements  the  results  of  everyday  observation  and 
experience.  The  strength  of  the  Old  Testament  lies 
in  this  its  realism,  its  daily  vigilance  and  experience  of 
life.  It  is  its  contact  with  life — the  life,  not  of  the 
yesterday  of  its  speakers,  but  of  their  to-day — that 
makes  its  voice  so  fresh  and  helpful  to  the  weary.  He 
whose  ear  is  daily  open  to  the  music  of  his  current  life 
will  always  find  himself  in  possession  of  words  that 
refresh  and  stimulate. 

But  serviceable  speech  needs  more  than  attentiveness 
and  experience.  Having  gained  the  truth,  the  prophet 
must  be  obedient  and  loyal  to  it.  Yet  obedience  and 
loyalty  to  the  truth  are  the  beginnings  of  martyrdom, 
of  which  the  Servant  now  goes  on  to  speak  as  the 
natural  and  immediate  consequence  of  his  prophecy. 

III.  The  Servant  as  Martyr. 

The  classes  of  men,  who  suffer  physical  ill-usage  at 
the  hands  of  their  fellow-men,  may  roughly  be  described 
as  three, — the  MiHtary  Enemy,  the  Criminal,  and  the 
Prophet ;  and  of  these  three  we  have  only  to  read 
history  to  know  that  the  Prophet  fares  by  far  the  worst. 
However  fatal  men's  treatment  of  their  enemies  in  war 
or  of  their  criminals  may  be,  it  is,  nevertheless,  sub- 
ject to  a  certain  order,  code  of  honour  or  principle  of 


xlix.  1-9;  1.4-1 1.]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  329 

justice.     But  in  all  ages  the  Prophet  has  been  the  target 
for  the  most  licentious  spite  and  cruelty  ;  for  torture, 
indecency   and   filth   past   belief.     Although  our   own 
civilisation  has  outHved  the  system  of  physical  punish- 
ment for  speech,   we   even  yet  see   philosophers  and 
statesmen,  who  have  used  no  weapons  but  exposition 
and  persuasion,  treated  by  their  opponents — who  would 
speak  of  a  foreign  enemy  with  respect — with  execration, 
gross  epithets,  vile  abuse  and  insults,  that  the  offenders 
would  not  pour  upon  a  criminal.     If  we  have  this  under 
our  own  eyes,  let  us  think  how  the  Prophet  must  have 
fared  before  humanity  learned  to  meet  speech  by  speech. 
Because  men   attacked  it,  not  with  the  sword  of  the 
invader   or  with    the  knife  of  the  assassin,  but  with 
words,    therefore  (till  not  very  long  ago)  society  let 
loose   upon    them    the    foulest    indignities    and   most 
horrible  torments.      Socrates'  valour  as  a  soldier  did 
not   save   him   from    the   malicious   slander,  the  false 
witness,   the  unjust  trial  and  the  poison,   with   which 
the  Athenians  answered  his  speech  against  themselves. 
Even  Hypatia's  womanhood  did  not  awe  the  mob  from 
tearing  her  to  pieces   for  her  teaching.     This  unique 
and  invariable  experience  of  the  Prophet  is  summed  up 
and  clenched  in  the  name  Martyr.     Martyr  originally 
meant  a  witness  or  witness-bearer,  but  now  it  is  the 
synonym  for  every  shame  and  suffering  which  the  cruel 
ingenuity  of  men's  black  hearts  can  devise  for  those 
they  hate.    A  Book  of  Battles  is  horrible  enough,  but  at 
least  valour  and  honour  have  kept  down  in  it  the  baser 
passions.     A  Newgate   Chronicle  is   ugly  enough,  but 
there  at  least  is  discipline  and  an  hospital.     You  have 
got  to  go  to  a  Book  of  Martyrs  to  see  to  what  sourness, 
wickedness,  malignity,  pitilessness  and  ferocity  men's 
hearts  can   lend  themselves.     There  is  something  in 


330  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  mere  utterance  of  truth,  that  rouses  the  very  devil 
in  the  hearts  of  many  men. 

Thus  it  had  always  been  in  Israel,  nation  not  only  of 
prophets,  but  of  the  slayers  of  prophets.  According  to 
Christ,  prophet-slaying  was  the  ineradicable  habit  of 
Israel.  Ye  are  the  sons  of  them  that  slew  the  prophets.  .  .  . 
O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  killer  of  prophets  and  stoner  of 
them  that  are  sent  unto  her  1  To  them  who  bare  it  the 
word  of  Jehovah  had  always  been  a  reproach :  cause  of 
estrangement,  indignities,  torments,  and  sometimes  of 
death.  Up  to  the  time  of  our  prophet  there  had  been 
the  following  notable  sufferers  for  the  Word  :  Elijah ; 
Micaiah  the  son  of  Imlah ;  Isaiah,  if  the  story  be  true 
that  he  was  slain  by  Manasseh  ;  but  nearer,  more  lonely 
and  more  heroic  than  all,  Jeremiah,  a  laughing-stock 
and  mockery,  reviled,  smitten,  fettered,  and  condemned 
to  death.  In  words  which  recall  the  experience  of  so 
many  individual  Israelites,  and  most  of  which  were 
used  by  Jeremiah  of  himself,  the  Servant  of  Jehovah 
describes  his  martyrdom  in  immediate  consequence 
from  his  prophecy. 

And  I — /  was  not  rebellious, 

Nor  turned  away  backward. 

My  bacji  I  have  given  to  the  smtters, 

And  my  cheek  to  tormenters  ; 

My  face  I  hid  not  from  insults  and  spitting. 

These  are  not  national  sufferings.  They  are  no 
reflection  of  the  hard  usage  which  the  captive  Israel 
suffered  from  Babylon.  They  are  the  reflection  of  the 
reproach  and  pains,  which,  for  the  sake  of  God's  word, 
individual  Israelites  more  than  once  experienced  from 
their   own  nation.     But  if  individual  experience,  and 


xlix.  1-9;  1.4-".]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  331 

not  national,  formed  the  original  of  this  picture  of  the 
Servant  as  Martyr,  then  surely  we  have  in  this  another 
strong  reason  against  the  objection  to  recognise  in  the 
Servant  at  last  an  individual.  It  may  be,  of  course, 
that  for  the  moment  our  prophet  feels  that  this  frequent 
experience  of  individuals  in  Israel  is  to  be  realised  by 
the  faithful  Israel,  as  a  whole,  in  their  treatment  by 
the  rest  of  their  cruel  and  unspiritual  countrymen. 
But  the  very  fact  that  individuals  have  previously 
fulfilled  this  martyrdom  in  the  history  of  Israel,  surely 
makes  it  possible  for  our  prophet  to  foresee,  that  the 
Servant,  who  is  to  fulfil  it  again,  shall  also  be  an 
individual. 

But,  returning  from  this  slight  digression  on  the 
person  of  the  Servant  to  his  fate,  let  us  emphasize 
again,  that  his  sufferings  came  to  him  as  the  result  of 
his  prophesying.  The  Servant's  sufferings  are  not 
penal,  they  are  not  yet  felt  to  be  vicarious.  They  are 
simply  the  reward  with  which  obdurate  Israel  met 
all  her  prophets,  the  inevitable  martyrdom  which  fol- 
lowed on  the  uttering  of  God's  Word.  And  in  this  the 
Servant's  experience  forms  an  exact  counterpart  to  that 
of  our  Lord.  For  to  Christ  also  reproach  and  agony 
and  death — whatever  higher  meaning  they  evolved — 
came  as  the  result  of  His  Word.  The  fact  that  Jesus 
suffered  as  our  great  High  Priest  must  not  make  us 
forget,  that  His  sufferings  fell  upon  Him  because  He 
was  a  Prophet.  He  argued  explicitly  He  must  suffer, 
because  so  suffered  the  prophets  before  Him.  He  put 
Himself  in  the  line  of  the  martyrs  :  as  they  had  killed 
the  servants.  He  said,  so  would  they  kill  the  Son. 
Thus  it  happened.  His  enemies  sought  to  entangle 
Him  in  His  talk:  it  was  for  His  talk  they  brought 
Him  to  trial.     Each  torment  and  indignity  which  the 


332  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Prophet-Servant  relates,  Jesus  suffered  to  the  letter. 
They  put  Him  to  shame  and  insulted  Him ;  *  His 
helpless  hands  were  bound  ;  they  spat  in  His  face  and 
smote  Him  with  their  palms;  they  mocked  and  they 
reviled  Him ;  scourged  Him  again ;  teased  and  tor- 
mented Him ;  hung  Him  between  thieves ;  and  to  the 
last  the  ribald  jests  went  up,  not  only  from  the  soldiers 
and  the  rabble,  but  from  the  learned  and  the  religious 
authorities  as  well,  to  whom  His  fault  had  been  that 
He  preached  another  word  than  their  own.  The  literal 
fulfilments  of  our  prophecy  are  striking,  but  the  main 
fulfilment,  of  which  they  are  only  incidents,  is,  that  like 
the  Servant,  our  Lord  suffered  directly  as  a  Prophet. 
He  enforced  and  He  submitted  to  the  essential  obliga- 
tion, which  lies  upon  the  true  Prophet,  of  suffering  for 
the  Word's  sake.  Let  us  remember  to  carry  this  over 
with  us  to  our  final  study  of  the  Suffering  Servant  as 
the  expiation  for  sin. 

In  the  meantime,  we  have  to  conclude  the  Servant's 
appearance  as  Martyr  in  ch.  1.  He  has  accepted  his 
martyrdom  ;  but  he  feels  it  is  not  the  end  with  him. 
God  will  bring  him  through,  and  vindicate  him  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world.  For  the  world,  in  their  usual  way, 
will  say  that  because  he  gives  them  a  new  truth  he  must 
be  wrong,  and  because  he  suffers  he  is  surely  guilty 
and  cursed  before  God.  But  he  will  not  let  himself  be 
confounded,  for  God  is  his  help  and  advocate. 

But  my  Lord  Jehovah  shall  help  me; 
Therefore f  I  let  not  myself  be  rebuffed  : 


*  How  all  their  meanness,  how  all  the  sense  of  shame  from  which 
He  suffered,  breaks  forth  in  these  words :  Are  ye  come  out  as  against  a 
robber  ? 


xlix.  1-9;  1.4-"-]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  333 

Therefore,  I  set  my  face  like  a  flint. 

And  know  that  1  shall  not  be  shamed. 

Near  is  my  Justifier ;  who  will  dispute  with  me? 

Let  us  stand  up  together  ! 
Who  is  mine  adversary  ?  * 

Let  him  draw  near  me. 
Lo  !  my  Lord  Jehovah  shall  help  me; 

Who  is  he  that  condemns  me  ? 
Lo  !  like  a  garment  all  of  them  rot. 

The  moth  doth  devour  them. 

These  lines,  in  which  the  Holy  Servant,  the  Martyr 
of  the  Word,  defies  the  world  and  asserts  that  God 
shall  vindicate  his  innocence,  are  taken  by  Paul  and 
used  to  assert  the  justification,  which  every  believer 
enjoys  through  faith  in  the  sufferings  of  Him,  who  was 
indeed   the  Holy  Servant  of  God.t 

The  last  two  verses  of  ch.  1.  are  somewhat  difficult. 
The  first  of  them  still  speaks  of  the  Servant,  |  and 
distinguishes  him — a  distinction  we  must  note  and 
emphasize — from  the  God-fearing  in  Israel. 

Who  is  among  you  that  feareth  Jehovah, 

That  hearkens  the  voice  of  His  Servant j 

That  walks  in  dark  places. 

And  light  he  has  none  ? 

Let  him  trust  in  the  name  ofjehovah. 

And  lean  on  his  God. 

That  is,  every  pious  believer  in  Israel  is  to  take  the 
Servant  for  an  example  ;  for  the  Servant  in  distress 

*  Literally,  lord  of  my  cause  ;  my  adversary  or  opponent  at  law. 
f  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  viii.,  31  fF. 

\  Though   Cheyne  takes  His   Servant  in   ver.   lo   to  be,  not    the 
Servant,  but  the  prophet. 


334  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

leans  upon  his  God.  And  so  Paul's  application  of  the 
Servant's  words  to  the  individual  believer  is  a  correct 
one.  But  if  our  prophet  is  able  to  think  of  the  Servant 
as  an  example  to  the  individual  Israelite,  that  surely  is 
a  thought  not  very  far  from  the  conception  of  the 
Servant  himself  as  an  individual. 

If  ver.  10  is  addressed  to  the  pious  in  Israel,  ver.  II 
vi^ould  seem  to  turn  with  a  last  word — as  the  last  words 
of  the  discourses  in  Second  Isaiah  so  often  turn — to  the 
wicked  in  Israel. 

Lo  !  all  you,  players  with  fire* 
That  gird  you  with  firebrands  I 

Walk  in  the  light  of  your  fire, 
In  the  firebrands  ye  kindled. 

This  from  my  hand  shall  be  yours; 
Ye  shall  lie  down  in  sorrow. 

It  IS  very  difficult  to  know,  who  are  meant  by  this 
warning.  An  old  and  almost  forgotten  interpretation 
is,  that  the  prophet  meant  those  exiles  who  played  with 
the  fires  of  political  revolution,  instead  of  abiding  the 
deliverance  of  the  Lord.  But  there  is  now  current 
among  exegetes  the  more  general  interpretation  that 
these  incendiaries  are  the  revilers  and  abusers  of  the 
Servant  within  Israel :  for  so  the  Psalms  speak  of  the 
slingers  of  burning  words  at  the  righteous.  We  must 
notice,  however,  that  the  metaphor  stands  over  against 
those  in  Israel  who  walk  in  dark  places  and  have  no 
light.  In  contrast  to  that  kind  of  life,  this  may  be  the 
kind  that  coruscates  with  vanity,  flashes  with  pride,  or 
burns  and  scorches  with  its  evil  passions.     We  have  a 

*  Kindlers  of  fire  is  the  literal  rendering.  But  the  word  is  not  the 
common  word  to  kindle,  and  is  here  used  of  wanton  fireraising. 


xlix.  1-9;  1.4-11.]    PROPHET  AND  MARTYR.  335 

similar  name  for  such  a  life.  We  call  it  a  display  of 
fireworks.  The  prophet  tells  them,  who  depend  on 
nothing  but  their  own  false  fires,  how  transient  these 
are,  how  quickly  quenched. 

But  is  it  not  weird,  that  on  our  prophet's  stage,  how- 
ever brilliantly  its  centre  shines  with  figures  of  heroes 
and  deeds  of  salvation,  there  should  always  be  this 
dark,  lurid  background  of  evil  and  accursed  men  ? 


CHAPTER  XX. 

THE   SUFFERING  SERVANT. 
Isaiah  lii.  13-liii. 

WE  are  now  arrived  at  the  last  of  the  passages 
on  the  Servant  of  the  Lord.  It  is  known  to 
Christendom  as  the  Fift3^-third  of  Isaiah,  but  its  verses 
have,  unfortunately,  been  divided  between  two  chapters, 
Hi.  13-15  and  liii.  Before  we  attempt  the  interpretation 
of  this  high  and  solemn  passage  of  Revelation,  let  us 
look  at  its  position  in  our  prophecy,  and  examine  its 
structure. 

The  peculiarities  of  the  style  and  of  the  vocabulary  of 
ch.  lii.  13-liii.,  along  with  the  fact,  that,  if  it  be  omitted, 
the  prophecies  on  either  side  readily  flow  together, 
have  led  some  critics  to  suppose  it  to  be  an  insertion, 
borrowed  from  an  earlier  writer.*  The  style — broken, 
sobbing  and  recurrent — is  certainly  a  change  from  the 
forward,  flowing  sentences,  on  which  we  have  been 
carried  up  till  now,  and  there  are  a  number  of  words 
that  we  find  quite  new  to  us.  Yet  surely  both  style 
and  words  are  fully  accounted  for  by  the  novel  and 
tragic  nature  of  the  subject,  to  which  the  prophet  has 

*  Thus  Ewald  supposed  ch.  lii.  13-liii.  to  be  an  elegy  upon  some 
martyr  in  the  persecutions  under  Manasseh.  Professor  Briggs,  as  we 
have  noticed  before,  claims  to  have  discovered  that  all  the  passages  in 
the  Servant  are  parts  of  a  trimeter  poem,  older  than  the  rest  of  the 
prophecy,  which  he  finds  to  be  in  hexameters.     See  p.  315. 


lii.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  337 

brought  us  :  regret  and  remorse,  though  they  speak 
through  the  same  lips  as  hope  and  the  assurance  of 
salvation,  must  necessarily  do  so  with  a  very  different 
accent  and  set  of  terms.  Criticism  surely  overreaches 
itself,  when  it  suggests  that  a  writer,  so  versatile  and 
dramatic  as  our  prophet,  could  not  have  written  ch. 
lii.  13-liii.  along  with,  say,  ch.  xl  or  ch.  lii.  1-12  or  ch. 
liv.  We  might  as  well  be  asked  to  assign  to  different 
authors  Hamlet's  soliloquy,  and  the  King's  conversation, 
in  the  same  play,  v/ith  the  ambassadors  from  Norway. 
To  aver  that  if  ch.  lii.  13-liii.  were  left  out,  no  one  who 
had  not  seen  it  would  miss  it,  so  closely  does  ch.  liv. 
follow  on  to  ch.  lii.  12,  is  to  aver  what  means  nothing. 
In  any  dramatic  work  you  may  leave  out  the  finest 
passage, — from  a  Greek  tragedy  its  grandest  chorus,  or 
from  a  play  of  Shakespeare's  the  hero's  soliloquy, — 
without  seeming,  to  eyes  that  have  not  seen  what  you 
have  done,  to  have  disturbed  the  connection  of  the 
whole.  Observe  the  juncture  in  our  prophecy  at  which 
this  last  passage  on  the  Servant  appears.  It  is  one 
exactly  the  same  as  that  at  which  another  great  passage 
on  the  Servant  was  inserted  (ch.  xlix. -I-9),  viz.,  just 
after  a  call  to  the  people  to  seize  the  redemption 
achieved  for  them  and  to  come  forth  from  Babylon.  It 
is  the  kind  of  cHmax  or  pause  in  their  tale,  which 
dramatic  writers  of  all  kinds  employ  for  the  solemn 
utterance  of  principles  lying  at  the  back,  or  tran- 
scending the  scope,  of  the  events  of  which  they  treat. 
To  say  the  least,  it  is  surely  more  probable  that  our 
prophet  himself  employed  so  natural  an  opportunity  to 
give  expression  to  his  highest  truths  about  the  Servant, 
than  that  some  one  else  took  his  work,  broke  up 
another  already  extant  work  on  the  Servant  and  thrust 
the  [}icccs  of  the  latter  into  the  former.     Moreover,  we 

VOL.    II.  22 


338  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

shall  find  many  of  the  ideas,  as  well  as  of  the  phrases, 
of  ch.  lii.  13-liii.  to  be  essentially  the  same  as  some  we 
have  already  encountered  in  our  prophecy.* 

There  is  then  no  evidence  that  this  singular  prophecy 
ever  stood  apart  from  its  present  context,  or  that  it 
was  written  by  another  writer  than  the  prophet,  by 
whom  we  have  hitherto  found  ourselves  conducted. 
On  the  contrary,  while  it  has  links  with  what  goes 
before  it,  we  see  good  reasons,  why  the  prophet  should 
choose  just  this  moment  for  uttering  its  unique  and 
transcendent  contents,  as  well  as  why  he  should 
employ  in  it  a  style  and  a  vocabulary,  so  different  from 
his  usual. 

Turning  now  to  the  structure  of  ch.  lii.  13-liii.,  we 
observe  that,  as  arranged  in  the  Canon,  there  are 
fifteen  verses  in  the  prophecy.  These  fifteen  verses 
fall  into  five  strophes  of  three  verses  each,  as  printed 
by  the  Revised  English  Version.  When  set  in  their 
own  original  lines,  however,  the  strophes  appear,  not  of 
equal,  but  of  increasing  length.  As  will  be  seen  from 
the  version  given  below,  the  first  (ch.  lii.  13-15)  has 
nine  lines,  the  second  (ch.  liii.  1-3)  has  ten  lines,  the 
third  (vv.  4-6)  has  eleven  lines,  the  fourth  (vv.  7-9) 
thirteen  lines,  the  fifth  (vv.  10-12)  fourteen  lines.  This 
increase  would  be  absolutely  regular,  if,  in  the  fourth 
strophe,  we  made  either  the  first  two  lines  one,  or  the 
last  two  one,  and  if  in  the  fifth  again  we  ran  the  first 


*  I  may  quote  Dillmann's  opinion  on  this  last  point:  "Anderer- 
seits  sind  nicht  bios  die  Grundgedanken  und  audi  einzelne  Wendungen 
wie  52,  13-15.  53,  7.  II.  12  durch  42,  I  ff.  49,  i  ff.  50,  3  ff.  so  wohl 
vorbereitet  und  so  sehr  in  Ubereinstimmung  damit.  dass  an  eine  fast 
unveranderte  Heriibernahme  des  Abschnitts  aus  einer  verlornen 
Schrift  [Ew.)  nicht  gedacht  werden  kann,  sondern  derselbe  doch 
wesentlich  als  Werk  des  Vrf.  angesehen  werden  muss  "  (^Commentary 
4th  ed.,  1890,  p.  453). 


Hi.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  339 

two  lines  together, — changes  which  the  metre  allows 
and  some  translators  have  adopted.  But,  in  either  case, 
we  perceive  a  regular  increase  from  strophe  to  strophe, 
that  is  not  only  one  of  the  many  marks  with  which  this 
most  artistic  of  poems  has  been  elaborated,  but  gives 
the  reader  the  very  solemn  impression  of  a  truth  that 
is  ever  gathering  more  of  human  life  into  itself,  an(| 
sweeping  forward  with  fuller  and  more  resistless 
volume. 

Each  strophe,  it  is  well  to  notice,  begins  with  one 
word  or  two  words  which  summarise  the  meaning  of 
the  whole  strophe  and  form  a  title  for  it.  Thus,  after 
the  opening  exclamation  Behold,  the  words  My  Servant 
shall  prosper  form,  as  we  shall  see,  not  only  a  summary 
of  the  first  strophe,  in  which  his  ultimate  exaltation 
is  described,  but  the  theme  of  the  whole  prophecy. 
Strophe  ii.  begins  Who  hath  believed,  and  accordingly 
in  this  strophe  the  unbelief  and  thoughtlessness  of 
them  who  saw  the  Servant  without  feeling  the  meaning 
of  his  suffering  is  confessed.  Surely  our  sicknesses 
fitly  entitles  strophe  iii.,  in  which  the  people  describe 
how  the  Servant  in  his  suffering  was  their  substitute. 
Oppressed  yet  he  humbled  himself  is  the  headline  of 
strophe  iv.,  and  that  strophe  deals  with  the  humility  and 
innocence  of  the  Servant  in  contrast  to  the  injustice 
accorded  him.  While  the  headline  of  strophe  v..  But 
Jehovah  had  purposed,  brings  us  back  to  the  main  theme 
of  the  poem,  that  behind  men's  treatment  of  the  Servant 
is  God's  holy  will ;  which  theme  is  elaborated  and 
brought  to  its  conclusion  in  strophe  v.  These  opening 
and  entitling  words  of  each  strophe  are  printed,  in  the 
following  translation,  in  larger  type  than  the  rest. 

As   in    the   rest   of    Hebrew    poetry,    so   here,    the 
measure  is  neither  regular  nor  smooth,  and  does  not 


340  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

depend  on  rhyme.  Yet  there  is  an  amount  of  asso- 
nance, which  at  times  approaches  to  rhyme.  Much  of 
the  meaning  of  the  poem  depends  on  the  use  of  the 
personal  pronouns — we  and  he  stand  contrasted  to  each 
other — and  it  is  these  coming  in  a  lengthened  form  at 
the  end  of  many  of  the  lines  that  suggest  to  the  ear 
something  like  rhyme.  For  instance,  in  Hii.  5,  6,  the 
second  and  third  verses  of  the  third  strophe,  two  of 
the  lines  run  out  on  the  bisyllable  -enu,  two  on  inu, 
and  two  on  the  word  lanu,  while  the  third  has  enu, 
not  at  the  end,  but  in  the  middle;  in  each  case,  the 
pronominal  suffix  of  the  first  person  plural.  We  tran- 
scribe these  lines  to  show  the  effect  of  this. 

W^hu'  m^holal  mipp^sha'enu 

M^dhukka'  me'awonothenii 

Musar  sh^lomenu  *alaw 

Ubhahabhuratho  nirpa'-lanu 

Kullanu  kass-ss'on  ta'inu 

'ish  Pdharko  paninu 

Wa  Jahweh  hiphgi  'a  bo  'eth-'awon  kullanu. 

This  is  the  strophe  in  which  the  assonance  comes 
oftenest  to  rhyme ;  but  in  strophe  i.  ehu  ends  two  lines, 
and  in  strophe  ii.  it  ends  three.  These  and  other 
assonants  occur  also  at  the  beginning  and  in  the  middle 
of  lines.  We  must  remember  that  in  all  the  cases 
quoted  it  is  the  personal  pronouns,  which  give  the 
assonance, — the  personal  pronouns  on  which  so  much 
of  the  meaning  of  the  poem  turns ;  and  that,  therefore, 
the  parallelism  primarily  intended  by  the  writer  is  one 
rather  of  meaning  than  of  sound.  The  pair  of  lines, 
parallel  in  meaning,  though  not  in  sound,  which  forms 
so  large  a  part  of  Hebrew  poetry,  is  used  throughout 


Hi.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  341 

this  poem  ;  but  the  use  of  it  is  varied  and  elaborated  to 
a  unique  degree.  The  very  same  words  and  phrases 
are  repeated,  and  placed  on  points,  from  which  they 
seem  to  call  to  each  other ;  as,  for  instance,  the  double 
many  in  strophe  i.,  the  of  us  all  in  strophe  iii.,  and  nor 
opened  he  his  mouth  in  strophe  iv.  The  ideas  are  very 
few  and  very  simple  ;  the  words  he,  we,  his,  ours,  see, 
hear,  know,  bear,  sickness,  strike,  stroke,  and  many  form, 
with  prepositions  and  particles,  the  bulk  of  the  pro- 
phecy. It  will  be  evident  how  singularly  suitable  this 
recurrence  is  for  the  expression  of  reproach,  and  of 
sorrowful  recollection.  It  is  the  nature  of  grief  and 
remorse  to  harp  upon  the  one  dear  form,  the  one  most 
vi»vid  pain.  The  finest  instance  of  this  repetition  is 
verse  6,  with  its  opening  keynote  "  kullanu  " — of  us  all 
like  sheep  went  astray,  with  its  close  on  that  keynote 
guilt  of  us  all,  "  kullanu."  But  throughout  notes  are 
repeated,  and  bars  recur,  expressive  of  what  was  done 
to  the  Servant,  or  what  the  Servant  did  for  man,  which 
seem  in  their  recurrence  to  say.  You  cannot  hear  too 
much  of  me :  I  am  the  very  Gospel.  A  peculiar 
sadness  is  lent  to  the  music  by  the  letters  h  and  1 
in  ^'  holie "  and  "  hehelie,"  the  word  for  sickness  or 
ailing  (ailing  is  the  Enghsh  equivalent  in  sense  and 
sound),  which  happens  so  often  in  the  poem.  The  new 
words,  which  have  been  brought  to  vary  this  recurrence 
of  a  few  simple  features,  are  mostly  of  a  sombre 
type.  The  heavier  letters  throng  the  lines  :  grievous 
bs  and  ms  are  multiplied,  and  syllables  with  long 
vowels  before  m  and  w.  But  the  words  sob  as  well  as 
tramp ;  and  here  and  there  one  has  a  wrench  and  one 
a  cry  in  it. 

Most  wonderful  and  mysterious  of  all  is  the  spectral 
fashion  in  which  the  prophecy  presents  its  Hero.     He 


342  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 


is  named  only  in  the  first  line  and  once  again  :  else- 
where He  is  spoken  of  as  He.  We  never  hear  or  see 
Himself.  But  all  the  more  solemnly  is  He  there :  a 
shadow  upon  countless  faces,  a  grievous  memory  on  the 
hearts  of  the  speakers.  He  so  haunts  all  we  see  and 
all  we  hear,  that  we  feel  it  is  not  Art,  but  Conscience, 
that  speaks  of  Him. 

Here  is  now  the  prophecy  itself,  rendered  into 
English  quite  literally,  except  for  a  conjunction  here 
and  there,  and,  as  far  as  possible,  in  the  rhythm  of  the 
original.  A  few  necessary  notes  on  difficult  words 
and  phrases  are  given. 

I. 

lii.  13  :  Behold,  my  Servant  shall  prosper  * 
Shall  rise,  be  lift  up,  be  exceedingly  high.^ 

Like  as  they  that  were  astonied  before  thee  were  many, 
— So  marred  from  a  man^s  was  his  visage, 
And  his  form  from  the  children  of  men  ! — 
So  shall  the  nations  he  startles  %  be  many, 
Before  him  shall  kings  shut  their  mouths. 
For  that  which  had  never  been  told  them  they  see, 
And  what  they  had  heard  not,  they  have  to  consider. 

*  This  verb  best  gives  the  force  of  the  Hebrew,  which  means  both 
to  deal  prudently  and  io  prosper  or  succeed.     See  p.  346. 

f  Vulgate  finely  :  "extolletur,  sublimis  erit  et  valde  elatus." 
\  "  The  term  rendered  '  startle  '  has  created  unnecessary  difficulty 
to  some  writers.  The  word  means  to  '  cause  to  spring  or  leap ; ' 
when  applied  to  fluids,  to  spirt  or  sprinkle  them.  The  fluid  spirted 
is  put  in  the  accusative,  and  it  is  spirted  upon  the  person.  In  the 
present  passage  the  person,  '  many  nations,'  is  in  the  accusative,  and 
it  is  simply  treason  against  the  Hebrew  language  to  render  'sprinkle.' 
The  interpreter  who  will  so  translate  will  *  do  anything.' " — A.  B. 
Davidson,  Expositor,  2nd  series,  viii.,  443.  The  LXX.  has  davfxaaopraL 
€6vr}  iroXKa.     The  Peschitto  and  Vulgate  render  sprinkle. 


lii.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  343 


II. 

IV/io  gave  believmg  to  that  which  we  heard^* 
And  the  arm  of  Jehovah  to  whom  was  it  bared  ? 
For  he  sprang  like  a  sapling  before  Him^\ 
As  a  root  from  the  ground  that  is  parched ; 
He  had  no  form  nor  beauty  that  we  should  regard  hinij 
Nor  aspect  that  ive  should  desire  him. 
Despised  and  rejected  of  men, 
Man  of  pains  and  familiar  with  ailing^ 
And  as  one  we  do  cover  the  face  from ^ 
Despised,  and  we  did  not  esteem  him, 

III. 

Surely  our  ailments  he  bore, 
And  our  pains  he  did  take  for  his  burden.X 
But  we — we  accounted  him  stricken, 
Smitten  of  God  and  degraded.^ 


*  And  not  our  report,  or  something  we  caused  to  be  heard,  as  in  the 
English  Version, — PiyiDC'  is  the  passive  paiticiple  of  yr32J^,  to  hear, 
and  not  of  yDK^il,  to  cause  to  hear.  The  speakers  are  now  the 
penitent  people  of  God  who  had  been  preached  to,  and  not  the 
prophets  who  had  preached. 

f  Tender  shoot.  Masculine  participle,  meaning  sucker,  or  suckling. 
Dr.  John  Hunter  {Christian  Treasury)  suggests  succulent  plant,  such 
as  grow  in  the  desert.  But  in  Job  viii.  16;  xiv.  7;  xv.  30,  the 
feminine  form  is  used  of  any  tender  shoot  of  a  tree,  and  the  feminine 
plural  in  Ezek.  xvii.  22  of  the  same.  The  LXX.  read  7rai5ioi'» 
infant.  Before  Hiin,  i.e.  Jehovah.  Cheyne,  following  Ewald,  reads 
before  us.     So  Giesebrecht. 

X  Took  for  his  burden.  Loaded  himself  with  them.  The  same 
grievous  word  which  God  uses  of  Himself  in  ch.  xlvi.     See  p^  1 80. 

§  There  is  more  than  afflicted  (Authorised  Version)  in  this  word. 
There  is  the  sense  of  being  humbled,  punished  for  his  own  sake. 


344  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Yet  he — he  was  pierced  jor  crimes  that  were  ours* 
He  was  crushed  for  guilt  that  was  ours* 
The  chastisement  of  our  peace  was  upon  him, 
By  his  stripes  healing  is  ours* 
Of  us  all  t  like  to  sheep  went  astray, 
Every  man  to  his  way  we  did  turn, 
And  Jehovah  made  light  upon  him 
The  guilt  of  us  all, 

IV. 
Oppressed,  he  did  humble  himself, 
Nor  opened  his  mouth — 
As  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter  is  led, 
As  a  sheep  fore  her  shearers  is  aumb — 
Nor  opened  his  mouth. 
By  tyranny  and  law  was  he  taken  % 
And  of  his  age  who  reflected, 

That  he  was  wrenched  §  from  the  land  of  the  living, 
For  My  people's  transgressions  the  stroke  was  on  him  ? 
So  they  made  with  the  wicked  his  grave. 
Yea,  with  the  felon  ||  his  tomb. 
Though  never  harm  had  he  done. 
Neither  was  guile  in  his  mouth. 

V. 

But  Jehovah  had  purposed  to  bruise  hiin, 
Had  laid  on  him  sickness  ; 

*  The  possessive  pronoun  has  been  put  to  the  end  of  the  Hues, 
where  it  stands  in  the  original,  producing  a  greater  emphasis  and 
even  a  sense  of  rhyme. 

t  ID^D  Kullanii  so  rendered  instead  of  "  all  of  us,"  in  order  to  be 
assonant  with  the  close  of  the  verse,  as  the  original  is,  which  closes 
with  kullam. 

J  That  is,  by  a  form  of  law  that  was  tyranny  a  judicial  crime. 

§  Cut  off  violently,  prematurel}',  unnaturally. 

II  See  p.  368. 


lii.  i3-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  345 

So  *  if  his  lije  should  offer  guilt  offering, 

A  seed  he  should  see,  he  should  lengthen  his  days. 

And  the  purpose  of  Jehovah  by  his  hand  should  prosper. 

From  the  travail  of  his  soul  shall  he  see,f 

By  his  knowledge  be  satisfied. 

My  Servant,    the  Righteous,  righteousness  wins  he  for 

many, 
And  their  guilt  he  takes  for  his  load. 
Therefore  I  set  him  a  share  with  the  great,  % 
Yea,  with  the  strong  shall  he  share  the  spoil: 
Because  that  he  poured  out  his  life  unto  deathy 
Let  himself  with  transgressors  be  reckoned; 
Yea,  he  the  sin  of  the  many  hath  borne, 
And  for  the  transgressors  he  interposes. 

Let  us  now  take  up  the  interpretation  strophe  by 
strophe. 

I.  Ch.  lii.  13-15.  When  last  our  eyes  were  directed  to 
the  Servant,  he  was  in  suffering  unexplained  and  un- 
vindicated  (ch.  1.  4-6).  His  sufferings  seemed  to  have 
fallen  upon  him  as  the  consequence  of  his  fidelity  to  the 
Word  committed  to  him ;  the  Prophet  had  inevitably 
become  the  Martyr.  Further  than  this  his  sufferings 
were  not  explained,  and  the  Servant  was  left  in  them, 


*  The  verbs,  hitherto  in  the  perfect  in  this  verse,  now  change  to  the 
imperfect ;  a  sign  that  they  express  the  purpose  of  God.  Cf.  Dillmann, 
in  loco. 

f  From  the  travail  of  his  soul  shall  he  see,  and  by  hts  knowledge 
be  satisfied.  Taking  IDynn  with  Vy^>>  instead  of  with  pn^\  This 
reading  suggested  itself  to  me  some  years  ago.  Since  then  I  have 
found  it  only  in  Prof.  Briggs's  translation,  Messianic  Prophecy,  p.  359. 
It  is  supported  by  the  frequent  parallel  in  which  we  find  seeing  and 
knowing  in  Hebrew. 

I  Some  translate  many,  i.e.,  the  many  to  whom  he  brings  righteous- 
ness, as  if  he  were  a  victor  with  a  great  host  behind  him. 


346  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

calling  upon  God  indeed,  and  sure  that  God  would  hear 
and  vindicate  him,  but  as  yet  unanswered  by  word  of 
God  or  word  of  man. 

It  is  these  words,  words  both  of  God  and  of  man, 
which  are  given  in  Isaiah  ch.  hi.  13-liii.  The  Sufferer 
is  explained  and  vindicated,  first  by  God  in  the  first 
strophe,  ch.  Hi.  13-15,  and  then  by  the  Conscience  of 
Men,  His  own  people,  in  the  second  and  third  (liii.  1-6) ; 
and  then,  as  it  appears,  the  Divine  Voice,  or  the  Prophet 
speaking  for  it,  resumes  in  strophes  iv.  and  v.,  and 
concludes  in  a  strain  similar  to  strophe  i. 

God's  explanation  and  vindication  of  the  Sufferer  is, 
then,  given  in  the  first  strophe.  It  is  summed  up  in  the 
first  line,  and  in  one  very  pregnant  word.  Jeremiah 
had  said  of  the  Messiah,  He  shall  reign  as  a  King  and 
deal  wisely  or  prosper;  *  and  so  God  says  here  of  the 
Servant,  Behold  he  shall  deal  wisely  or  prosper.  The 
Hebrew  verb  does  not  get  full  expression  in  any  English 
one.  In  rendering  it  shall  deal  wisely  or  prudently  our 
translators  undoubtedly  touch  the  quick  of  it.  For  it 
is  originally  a  mental  process  or  quality  :  has  insight, 
understands,  is  farseeing.  But  then  it  also  includes  the 
effect  of  this — understands  so  as  to  get  on,  deals  wisely  so 
as  to  succeed,  is  practical  both  in  his  way  of  working  and 
in  being  sure  of  his  end.  Ewald  has  found  an  almost 
exact  equivalent  in  German,  "hat  Geschick ; "  for 
Geschick  means  both  skill  or  address  and  fate  or  destiny. 
The  Hebrew  verb  is  the  most  practical  in  the  whole 
language,  for  this  is  precisely  the  point  which  the 
prophecy  seeks  to  bring  out  about  the  Servant's  suffer- 
ings. They  are  practical.  He  is  practical  in  them. 
He  endures  them,  not  for  their  own  sake,  but  for  some 


*  Jer.  xxiii,  5. 


lii.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  347 

practical  end  of  which  he  is  aware  and  to  which  they  must 
assuredly  bring  him.  His  failure  to  convince  men  by 
his  word,  the  pain  and  spite  which  seem  to  be  his  only 
wage,  are  not  the  last  of  him,  but  the  beginning  and  the 
way  to  what  is  higher.  So  shall  he  rise  and  be  lift  up 
and  be  very  high.  The  suffering,  which  in  ch.  1.  seemed 
to  be  the  Servant's  misfortune,  is  here  seen  as  his 
wisdom  which  shall  issue  in  his  glory. 

But  of  themselves  men  do  not  see  this,  and  they  need 
to  be  convinced.  Pain,  the  blessed  means  of  God,  is 
man's  abhorrence  and  perplexity.  All  along  the  history  of 
the  world  the  Sufferer  has  been  the  astonishment  and 
stumbling-block  of  humanity.  The  barbarian  gets  rid  of 
him  ;  he  is  the  first  difficulty  with  which  every  young 
literature  wrestles ;  to  the  end  he  remains  the  problem 
of  philosophy  and  the  sore  test  of  faith.  It  is  not  native 
to  men  to  see  meaning  or  profit  in  the  Sufferer ;  they 
are  staggered  by  him,  they  see  no  reason  or  promise 
in  him.  So  did  men  receive  this  unique  Sufferer,  this 
Servant  of  Jehovah.  The  many  were  astonied  at  him; 
his  visage  was  so  marred  more  than  men^  and  his  form 
than  the  children  of  men.  But  his  life  is  to  teach  them 
the  opposite  of  their  impressions,  and  to  bring  them 
out  of  their  perplexity  into  reverence  before  the  revealed 
purpose  of  God  in  the  Sufferer.  As  they  that  were 
astonied  at  thee  were  many,  so  shall  the  nations  he  startles 
be  many;  kings  shall  shut  their  mouths  at  him,  for 
that  which  was  not  told  them  they  see,  and  that  which 
they  have  heard  not  they  have  to  consider, — viz.,  the 
triumph  and  influence  to  which  the  Servant  was  con- 
sciously led  through  suffering.  There  may  be  some 
reflection  here  of  the  way  in  which  the  Gentiles  re- 
garded the  Suffering  Israel,  but  the  reference  is  vague, 
and  perhaps  purposely  so. 


348  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

The  first  strophe,  then,  gives  us  just  the  general 
theme.  In  contrast  to  human  experience  God  reveals 
in  His  Servant  that  suffering  is  fruitful,  that  sacrifice  is 
practical.     Pain,  in  God's  service,  shall  lead  to  glory. 

II.  Ch.  hii.  1-3.  God  never  speaks  but  in  man  He 
wakens  conscience,  and  the  second  strophe  of  the 
prophecy  (along  with  the  third)  is  the  answer  of  con- 
science to  God.  Penitent  men,  looking  back  from  the 
light  of  the  Servant's  exaltation  to  the  time  when  his 
humiliation  was  before  their  eyes,  say,  "  Yes  :  what 
God  has  said  is  true  of  us.  We  were  the  deaf  and 
the  indifferent.  We  heard,  but  who  of  us  believed  what 
we  heard,  and  to  ivhom  was  the  arm  of  the  Lord — His 
purpose,  the  hand  He  had  in  the  Servant's  sufferings — 
revealed .?  "  * 

Who  are  these  penitent  speakers  ?  Some  critics  have 
held  them  to  be  the  heathen,  more  have  said  that  they 
are  Israel.  But  none  have  pointed  out  that  the  writer 
gives  himself  no  trouble  to  define  them,  but  seems 
more  anxious  to  impress  us  with  their  consciousness 
of  their  moral  relation  to  the  Servant.  On  the  whole, 
it  would  appear  that  it  is  Israel,  whom  the  prophet 
has  in  mind  as  the  speakers  of  vv.  1-6.  For,  besides 
the  fact  that  the  Old  Testament  knows  nothing  of  a 
bearing  by  Israel  of  the  sins  of  the  Gentiles,  it  is 
expressly  said  in  ver.  8,  that  the   sins  for  which  the 

*  Hitzig  (among  others)  held  that  it  is  the  prophets  who  are  the 
speakers  of  ver.  I,  and  that  the  voices  of  the  penitent  people  come  in 
onl}'^  with  ver.  2  or  ver,  3.  In  that  case  IJTlI^IDS^  would  mean  what  we 
heard  from  God  {TWWy^  is  elsewhere  used  for  the  prophetic  message) 
and  delivered  to  the  people.  This  interpretation  multiplies  the 
dramatis  personae,  but  does  not  materially  alter  the  meaning,  of  the 
prophecy.  It  merely  changes  part  of  the  penitent  people's  self- 
reproach  into  a  reproach  cast  on  them  by  their  prophets.  But  there  is 
no  real  reason  for  introducing  the  prophets  as  the  speakers  of  ver.  I. 


lii.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  349 

Servant  was  stricken  were  the  sins  of  my  people  ;  which 
people  must  be  the  same  as  the  speakers,  for  they  own 
in  vv.  4-6  that  the  Servant  bore  their  sins.  For  these 
and  other  reasons  the  mass  of  Christian  critics  at  the 
present  day  are  probably  right  when  they  assume  that 
Israel  are  the  speakers  in  vv.  1-6;*  but  the  reader 
must  beware  of  allowing  his  attention  to  be  lost  in 
questions  of  that  kind.  The  art  of  the  poem  seems 
intentionally  to  leave  vague  the  national  relation  of  the 
speakers  to  the  Servant,  in  order  the  more  impressively 
to  bring  out  their  moral  attitude  towards  him.  There 
is  an  utter  disappearance  of  all  lines  of  separation 
between  Jew  and  Gentile, — both  in  the  first  strophe, 

*  For  the  argument  that  it  is  Israel  who  speaks  here,  see  Hoff- 
mann {Schrifibeweis),  who  was  converted  from  the  other  view,  and 
Dillmann,  4th  ed.,  in  loco.  A  very  ingenious  attempt  has  been  made  by 
Giesebvecht  (Beitrdge  zurjesaia  Kritik,  1890,  p.  146  ff.),  in  favour  of  the 
interpretation  that  the  heathen  are  the  speakers.  His  reasons  are  these  : 
I.  It  is  the  heathen  who  are  spoken  of  in  hi.  13-15,  and  a  change  to 
Israel  would  be  too  sudden.  Answer  :  The  heathen  are  not  exclusively 
spoken  of  in  lii.  13-15;  but  if  they  were  a  change  in  the  next  verse 
to  Israel  would  not  be  more  rapid  than  some  already  made  by  the 
prophet.  2.  The  words  in  Hii.  i  suit  the  heathen.  They  have  already 
received  the  news  of  the  exaltation  of  the  Servant,  which  in  lii.  15 
was  promised  them.  This  is  the  I^TI^IDI^,  that  is  news  we  have  just 
heard,  ji^j^n  is  a  pluperfect  of  the  subjunctive  mood:  Who  could 
or  who  would  have  believed  this  news  of  the  exaltation  we  have  just 
heard,  and  the  arm,  of  Jehovah  to  whom  was  it  revealed !  i.e.,  it  was 
revealed  to  nobody.  Answer :  besides  the  precariousness  of  taking 
{"•JDJ^n  as  a  pluperfect  subjunctive,  this  interpretation  is  opposed  to 
the  general  effort  of  the  prophecy,  which  is  to  expose  unbelief  before 
the  exaltation,  not  after  it.  3,  To  get  rid  of  the  argument — that,  while 
the  speakers  own  that  the  Servant  bears  their  sins,  it  is  said  the 
Servant  was  stricken  for  the  sins  of  my  people,  and  that  therefore  the 
speakers  must  be  the  same  as  "  my  people  " : — Giesebrecht  would  utterly 
alter  the  reading  of  ver.  8  from  ID'?  r^lJ  \Xj]2  V^^^D,/or  the  traitsgression 
of  my  people  was  the  stroke  to  him  to  I^^r  Dl^P^SD,  for  their  stroke  was 
he  smitten. 


350  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

wherC;  although  Gentile  names  are  used,  Jews  may 
yet  be  meant  to  be  included,  and  in  the  rest  of  the 
poem, — as  if  the  writer  wished  us  to  feel  that  all  men 
stood  over  against  that  solitary  Servant  in  a  common 
indifference  to  his  suffering  and  a  common  conscience 
of  the  guilt  he  bears.  In  short,  it  is  no  historical  situa- 
tion, such  as  some  critics  seem  anxious  to  fasten  him 
down  upon,  that  the  prophet  reflects  ;  but  a  certain 
moral  situation,  ideal  in  so  far  as  it  was  not  yet  realised, 
— the  state  of  the  quickened  human  conscience  over 
against  a  certain  Human  Suffering,  in  which,  having 
ignored  it  at  the  time,  that  conscience  now  realises  that 
the  purpose  of  God  was  at  work. 

In  vv.  2  and  3  the  penitent  speakers  give  us  the 
reasons  of  their  disregard  of  the  Servant  in  the  days 
of  his  suffering.  In  these  reasons  there  is  nothing 
peculiar  to  Israel,  and  no  special  experience  of  Jewish 
history  is  reflected  by  the  terms  in  which  they  are 
conveyed.  They  are  the  confession,  in  general  language, 
of  an  universal  human  habit, — the  habit  of  letting  the 
eye  cheat  the  heart  and  conscience,  of  allowing  the  aspect 
of  suffering  to  blind  us  to  its  meaning ;  of  forgetting  in 
our  sense  of  the  ugliness  and  helplessness  of  pain,  that 
it  has  a  motive,  a  future  and  a  God.  It  took  ages  to 
wean  mankind  from  those  native  feelings  of  aversion 
and  resentment,  which  caused  them  at  first  to  abandon 
or  destroy  their  sick.  And,  even  now,  scorn  for  the 
weak  and  incredulity  in  the  heroism  or  in  the 
profitableness  of  suffering  are  strong  in  the  best  of 
us.  We  judge  by  looks ;  we  are  hurried  by  the  phy- 
sical impression,  which  the  sufferer  makes  on  us,  or  by 
our  pride  that  we  are  not  as  he  is,  into  peremptory  and 
harsh  judgements  upon  him.  Every  day  we  allow  the 
dulness  of  poverty,   the  ugliness  of  disease,   the  un- 


Hi.  13-liii.i  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  351 

profitableness  of  misfortune,  the  ludicrousness  of  failure, 
to  keep  back  conscience  from  discovering  to  us  our 
share  of  responsibility  for  them,  and  to  repel  our  hearts 
from  that  sympathy  and  patience  with  them,  which 
along  with  conscience  would  assuredly  discover  to  us 
their  place  in  God's  Providence  and  their  special  sig- 
nificance for  ourselves.  It  is  this  original  sin  of  man, 
of  which  these  penitent  speakers  own  themselves 
guilty. 

But  no  one  is  ever  permitted  to  rest  with  a  physical 
or  intellectual  impression  of  suffering.  The  race,  the 
individual,  has  always  been  forced  by  conscience  to  the 
task  of  finding  a  moral  reason  for  pain  ;  and  nothing 
so  marks  man's  progress  as  the  successive  solutions  he 
has  attempted  to  this  problem.  The  speakers,  there- 
fore, proceed  in  the  next  part  of  their  confession, 
strophe  iii.,  to  tell  us  what  they  first  falsely  accounted 
the  moral  reason  of  the  Servant's  suffering  and  what 
they  afterwards  found  to  be  the  truth. 

III.  liii.  4-6.  The  earliest  and  most  common  moral 
judgement,  which  men  pass  upon  pain,  is  that  which  is 
implied  in  its  name — that  it  is  penal.  A  man  suffers 
because  God  is  angry  with  him  and  has  stricken  him. 
So  Job's  friends  judged  him,  and  so  these  speakers 
tell  us  they  had  at  first  judged  the  Servant.  We  had 
accounted  him  stricken,  smitten  of  God  and  afflicted , — 
stricken,  that  is,  with  a  plague  of  sickness,  as  Job  was, 
for  the  simile  of  the  sick  man  is  still  kept  up ;  smitten 
of  God  and  degraded  or  humbled,  for  it  seemed  to  them 
that  God's  hand  was  in  the  Servant's  sickness,  to  punish 
and  disgrace  him  for  his  own  sin^.  But  now  they 
know  they  were  wrong.  The  hand  of  God  was  indeed 
upon  the  Servant,  and  the  reason  was  sin  ;  yet  the  sin 
was  not  his,  but  theirs.     Surely  our  sicknesses  he  bore, 


352i  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

and  our  pains  he  took  as  his  burden.  He  was  pierced  for 
iniquities  that  were  ours.  He  was  crushed  for  crimes  that 
were  ours.  Strictly  interpreted,  these  verses  mean  no 
more  than  that  the  Servant  was  involved  in  the  conse- 
quences of  his  people's  sins.  The  verbs  bore  and  made 
his  burden  are  indeed  taken  by  some  to  mean  necessarily, 
removal  or  expiation  ;  but  in  themselves,  as  is  clear 
from  their  application  to  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  the 
whole  of  the  generation  of  Exile,  they  m.ean  no  more 
than  implication  in  the  reproach  and  the  punishment 
of  the  people's  sins.*  Nevertheless,  as  we  have 
explained  in  a  note  below,  it  is  really  impossible  to 
separate  the  suffering  of  a  Servant,  who  has  been 
announced  as  practical  and  prosperous  in  his  suffer- 
ing, from  the  end  for  which  it  is  endured.  We  cannot 
separate    the   Servant's  bearing  of  the   people's   guilt 

*  XSJ^J  and  T'ZID.  In  speaking  of  his  country's  woes,  Jeremiah  (x.  19) 
says  :  This  is  sickness,  or  my  sickness,  and  I  must  hear  it,  vH  HT 
"•JS^^t^'NI.  Ezekiel  (iv.  4)  is  commanded  to  lie  on  his  side,  and  in  that 
symbolic  position  to  bear  the  iniquity  of  His  people,  DJIl^  t^t^^Jl,  One  of 
the  Lamentations  (v.  7)  complains:  Our  fathers  have  sinned  and  are 
not,  avd  we  bear  ("PDD)  their  iniquities.  In  these  cases  the  meaning  of 
both  t^L^J  and  ?^D  is  simply  to  feel  the  weight  of,  be  involved  in. 
The  verbs  do  not  convey  the  sense  of  carrying  off  or  expiating.  But 
still  it  had  been  said  of  the  Servant  that  in  his  suffering  he  would  be 
practical  and  prosper ;  so  that  when  we  now  hear  that  he  bears  his 
people's  sins,  we  are  ready  to  understand  that  he  does  not  do  this 
for  the  mere  sake  of  sharing  them,  but  for  a  practical  purpose,  which, 
of  course,  can  only  be  their  removal.  There  is,  therefore,  no  need 
to  quarrel  with  the  interpretation  of  ver.  4,  that  the  Servant  carries 
away  the  suffering  with  which  he  is  laden.  Matthew  makes  this 
interpretation  (viii.  17)  in  speaking  of  Christ's  healing.  But  it 
is  a  very  interesting  fact,  and  not  without  light  upon  the  free 
and  plastic  way  in  which  the  New  Testament  quotes  from  the  Old, 
that  Matthew  has  ignored  the  original  and  literal  meaning  of  the 
quotation,  which  is  that  the  Servant  shared  the  sicknesses  of  the 
people :  a  sense  impossible  in  the  case  for  which  the  Evangelist  uses 
the  words. 


lii.  i3-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  353 

from  his  removal  of  it.  And,  indeed,  this  practical  end 
of  his  passion  springs  forth,  past  all  doubt,  from  the 
rest  of  the  strophe,  which  declares  that  the  Servant's 
sufferings  are  not  only  vicarious  but  redemptive.  The 
discipline  of  our  peace  was  upon  him,  and  with  his  stripes 
we  are  healed.  Translators  agree  that  discipline  of  our 
peace  must  mean  discipline  which  procures  our  peace. 
The  peace,  the  healing,  is  ours,  in  consequence  of  the 
chastisement  and  the  scourging  that  was  his.  The 
next  verse  gives  us  the  obverse  and  complement  of 
the  same  thought.  The  pain  was  his  in  consequence 
of  the  sin  that  was  ours.  All  we  like  sheep  had  gone 
astray,  and  the  Lord  laid  on  him  the  iniquity  of  us  all, 
— literally  iniquity,  but  inclusive  of  its  guilt  and  con- 
sequences. Nothing  could  be  plainer  than  these  words. 
The  speakers  confess,  that  they  know  that  the  Servant's 
suffering  was  both  vicarious  and  redemptive.* 

But  how  did  they  get  this  knowledge  ?  They  do  not 
describe  any  special  means  by  which  it  came  to  then). 
They  state  this  high  and  novel  truth  simply  as  the  la^t 
step  in  a  process  of  their  consciousness.  At  first  the^ 
were  bewildered  by  the  Servant's  suffering ;  then  they 
thought  it  contemptible,  thus  passing  upon  it  an  intelj- 
lectual  judgement ;  then,  forced  to  seek  a  moral  reason 
for  it,  they  accounted  it  as  penal  and  due  to  the  Servant 
for  his  own  sins ;  then  they  recognised  that  its  penalty \ 
was  vicarious,  that  the  Servant  was  suffering  for  them  ; 

*  But  they  do  not  tell  us,  whether  they  were  totally  exempted  from 
suffering  by  the  Servant's  pains,  or  whether  they  also  suffered  with 
him  the  consequence  of  their  misdeeds.  For  that  question  is  not  now 
present  to  their  minds.  Whether  they  also  suffer  or  not  (and  other 
chapters  in  the  prophecy  emphasize  the  people's  bearing  of  the 
consequences  of  thejr  misdeeds),  they  know  that  it  was  not  their 
own,  but  the  Servant's  suffering,  which  was  alone  the  factor  in  their 
redemption. 

VOL.    II,  23 


354  fUE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

and  finally,  they  knew  that  it  was  redemptive,  the  means 
of  their  own  healing  and  peace.  This  is  a  natural 
climax,  a  logical  and  moral  progress  of  thought.  The 
last  two  steps  are  stated  simply  as  facts  of  experience 
following  on  other  facts.  Now  our  prophet  usually 
publishes  the  truths,  with  which  he  is  charged,  as  the 
very  words  of  God,  introducing  them  with  a  solemn 
and  authoritative  Thus  saith  Jehovah.  But  this  novel 
and  supreme  truth  of  vicarious  and  redemptive  suffering, 
this  passion  and  virtue  which  crowns  the  Servant's  office, 
is  introduced  to  us,  not  by  the  mouth  of  God,  but  by 
the  lips  of  penitent  men ;  not  as  an  oracle,  but  as  a 
confession  ;  not  as  the  commission  of  Divine  authority 
laid  beforehand  upon  the  Servant  like  his  other  duties, 
but  as  the  conviction  of  the  human  conscience  after  the 
Servant  has  been  lifted  up  before  it.  In  short,  by  this 
unusual  turn  of  his  art,  the  prophet  seeks  to  teach 
us,  that  vicarious  suffering  is  not  a  dogmatic,  but  an 
experimental  truth.  The  substitution  of  the  Servant 
for  the  guilty  people,  and  the  redemptive  force  of  that 
substitution,  are  no  arbitrary  doctrine,  for  which  God 
requires  from  man  a  mere  intellectual  assent ;  they 
are  no  such  formal  institution  of  religion  as  mental 
indolence  and  superstition  delight  to  have  prepared 
for  their  mechanical  adherence  :  but  substitutive  suffer- 
ing is  a  great  living  fact  of  human  experience,  whose 
outward  features  are  not  more  evident  to  men's  eyes 
than  its  inner  meaning  is  appreciable  by  their  con- 
science, and  of  irresistible  effect  upon  their  whole  moral 
nature. 

Is  this  lesson  of  our  prophet's  art  not  needed  ?  Men 
have  always  been  apt  to  think  of  vicarious  suffering, 
and  of  its  function  in  their  salvation,  as  something 
above  and  apart  from  their  moral  nature,  with  a  value 


lii.  13-Iiii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  355 

known  only  to  God  and  not  calculable  in  the  terms  of 
conscience  or  of  man's  moral  experience ;  nay,  rather 
as  something  that  conflicts  with  man's  ideas  of  morality 
and  justice.  Whereas  both  the  fact  and  the  virtue  of 
vicarious  suffering  come  upon  us  all,  as  these  speakers 
describe  the  vicarious  sufferings  of  the  Servant  to  have 
come  upon  them,  as  a  part  of  inevitable  experience.  If 
it  be  natural,  as  we  saw,  for  men  to  be  bewildered  by 
the  first  sight  of  suffering,  to  scorn  it  as  futile  and  to 
count  it  the  fault  of  the  sufferer  himself,  it  is  equally 
natural  and  inevitable  that  these  first  and  hasty  theories 
should  be  dispelled  by  the  longer  experience  of  life  and 
the  more  thorough  working  of  conscience.  The  stricken 
are  not  always  bearing  their  own  sin.  *' Suffering  is 
the  minister  of  justice.  This  is  true  in  part,  yet  it 
also  is  inadequate  to  explain  the  facts.  Of  all  the 
sorrow  which  befalls  humanity,  how  small  a  part  falls 
upon  the  specially  guilty;  how  much  seems  rather  to 
seek  out  the  good  !  We  might  almost  ask  whether  it 
is  not  weakness  rather  than  wrong  that  is  punished 
in  this  world."*  In  every  nation,  in  every  family, 
the  innocent  suffer  for  the  guilty.  Vicarious  suffer- 
ing is  not  arbitrary  or  accidental ;  it  comes  with  our 
growth ;  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of  things.  It  is 
that  part  of  the  Service  of  Man,  to  which  we  are  all 
born,  and  of  the  reality  of  which  we  daily  grow  more 
aware. 

But  even  more  than  its  necessity  life  teaches  us 
its  virtue.  Vicarious  suffering  is  not  a  curse.  It  is 
Service — Service  for  God.  It  proves  a  power  where 
every  other  moral  force  has  failed.  By  it  men  are  re- 
deemed, on  whom  justice  and  their  proper  punishment 

*  Mystery  of  Pain,  by  James  Hinton,  p.  27. 


356  THE  BOOK  OF  IS/ilAH. 

have  been  able  to  effect  nothing.  Why  this  should 
be  is  very  intelHgible.  We  are  not  so  capable  of 
measuring  the  physical  or  moral  results  of  our  actions 
upon  our  own  characters  or  in  our  own  fortunes  as 
we  are  upon  the  lives  of  others ;  nor  do  we  so  awaken 
to  the  guilt  and  heincusness  of  our  sin  as  when  it 
reaches  and  implicates  lives,  which  were  not  partners 
with  us  in  it.  Moreover,  while  a  man's  punishment  is 
apt  to  give  him  an  excuse  for  saying,  I  have  expiated 
my  sin  myself,  and  so  to  leave  him  self-satisfied  and 
with  nothing  for  which  to  be  grateful  or  obliged  to  a 
higher  will ;  or  while  it  may  make  him  reckless  or 
plunge  him  into  despair  ;  so,  on  the  contrary,  when  he 
recognises  that  others  feel  the  pain  of  his  sin  and  have 
come  under  its  weight,  then  shame  is  quickly  born 
within  him,  and  pity  and  every  other  passion  that  can 
melt  a  hard  heart.  If,  moreover,  the  others  who  bear 
his  sin  do  so  voluntarily  and  for  love's  sake,  then  how 
quickly  on  the  back  of  shame  and  pity  does  gratitude 
rise,  and  the  sense  of  debt  and  of  constraint  to  their 
will !  For  all  these  very  intelligible  reasons,  vicarious 
suffering  has  been  a  powerful  redemptive  force  in  the 
experience  of  the  race.  Both  the  fact  of  its  beneficence 
and  the  moral  reasons  for  this  are  clear  enough  to  lift 
us  above  a  question,  which  sometimes  gives  trouble 
regarding  it, — the  question  of  its  justice.  Such  a  ques- 
tion is  futile  about  any  service  for  man,  which  succeeds 
as  this  does  where  all  others  have  failed,  and  which 
proves  itself  so  much  in  harmony  with  man's  moral 
nature.  But  the  last  shred  of  objection  to  the  justice 
of  vicarious  suffering  is  surely  removed  when  the 
sufferer  is  voluntary  as  well  as  vicarious.  And,  in 
truth,  human  experience  feels  that  it  has  found  its 
highest    and    its    holiest    fact    in    the  love  that,  being 


Hi.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  357 

innocent  itself,  stoops  to  bear  its  fellows'  sins, — not 
only  the  anxiety  and  reproach  of  them,  but  even  the 
cost  and  the  curse  of  them.  Greater  love  hath  no  man 
than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends; 
and  greater  Service  can  no  man  do  to  man,  than  to 
serve  them  in  this  way. 

Now  in  this  universal  human  experience  of  the 
inevitableness  and  the  virtue  of  vicarious  suffering, 
Israel  had  been  deeply  baptized.  The  nation  had 
been  served  by  suffering  in  all  the  ways  we  have  just 
described.  Beginning  with  the  belief  that  all  righteous- 
ness prospered,  Israel  had  come  to  see  the  righteous 
afflicted  in  her  midst ;  the  best  Israehtes  had  set 
their  minds  to  the  problem,  and  learned  to  believe,  at 
least,  that  such  affliction  was  of  God's  will, — part  of 
His  Providence,  and  not  an  interruption  to  it.  Israel, 
too,  knew  the  moral  solidarity  of  a  people  :  that  citizens 
share  each  other's  sorrows,  and  that  one  generation 
rolls  over  its  guilt  upon  the  next.  Frequently  had  the 
whole  nation  been  spared  for  a  pious  remnant's  sake ; 
and  in  the  Exile,  while  all  the  people  were  formally 
afflicted  by  God,  it  was  but  a  portion  of  them  whose 
conscience  was  quick  to  the  meaning  of  the  chastise- 
ment, and  of  them  alone,  in  their  submissive  and 
intelligent  sufferance  of  the  Lord's  wrath,  could  the 
opening  gospel  of  the  prophecy  be  spoken,  that  they 
had  accomplished  their  warfare,  and  had  received  of  the 
lord's  hand  double  for  all  their  sins.  But  still  more 
vivid  than  these  collective  substitutes  for  the  people 
were  the  individuals,  who,  at  different  points  in  Israel's 
history,  had  stood  forth  and  taken  up  as  their  own  the 
nation's  conscience  and  stooped  to  bear  the  nation's 
cnrse.  Far  away  back,  a  Moses  had  offered  himself  for 
d-istruction,  if  for  his  sake  God  would  spare  his  sinful 


358  '  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

and  thoughtless  countrymen.     In  a  psalm  of  the  Exile 
it  is  remembered  that, 

He  saidy  that  He  ivould  destroy  them. 

Had  not  Moses  His   chosen  stood  before   Him   in   the 

breach , 
To  turn  away  His  wrath,  lest  He  should  destroy* 

And  Jeremiah,  not  by  a  single  heroic  resolve,  but  by 
the  slow  agony  and  martyrdom  of  a  long  Hfe,  had  taken 
Jerusalem's  sin  upon  his  own  heart,  had  felt  himself 
forsaken  of  God,  and  had  voluntarily  shared  his  city's 
doom,  while  his  generation,  unconscious  of  their  guilt 
and  blind  to  their  fate,  despised  him  and  esteemed  him 
not.  And  Ezekiel,  who  is  Jeremiah's  far-off  reflection, 
who  could  only  do  in  symbol  what  Jeremiah  did  in 
reality,  was  commanded  to  lie  on  his  side  for  days,  and 
so  bear  the  guilt  of  his  people,  f 

But  in  Israel's  experience  it  was  not  only  the  human 
Servant  who  served  the  nation  by  suffering,  for  God 
Himself  had  come  down  to  carry  His  distressed  and 
accursed  people,  and  to  load  Himself  with  them.  Our 
prophet  uses  the  same  two  verbs  of  Jehovah  as  are 
used  of  the  Servant. |  Like  the  Servant,  too,  God  was 
afflicted  in  all  their  affliction;  and  His  love  towards 
them  was  expended  in  passion  and  agony  for  their 
sins.  Vicarious  suffering  was  not  only  human,  it  was 
Divine. 

Was  it  very  wonderful  that  a  people  with  such  an 

*  Psalm  cvi.  23 ;  cf.  also  ver.  32,  where  the  other  side  of  the 
solidarity  between  Moses  and  the  people  comes-  out.  They  angered 
Him  also  at  the  waters  of  Strife,  so  that  it  went  ill  with  Moses  for  their 
sakes  .  .  .  he  spake  unadvisedly  with  his  lips. 

t  See  p.  352. 

J  Isa,  xlvi.  3,  4.     See  pp.  179,  180  of  this  volume. 


Hi.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  359 

experience,  and  with  such  examples,  both  human  and 
Divine,  should  at  last  be  led  to  the  thought  of  One 
Sufferer,  who  would  exhibit  in  Himself  all  the  meaning, 
and  procure  for  His  people  all  the  virtue,  of  that 
vicarious  reproach  and  sorrow,  which  a  long  line  of 
their  martyrs  had  illustrated,  and  which  God  had 
revealed  as  the  passion  of  His  own  love  ?  If  they  had 
had  every  example  that  could  fit  them  to  understand 
the  power  of  such  a  sufferer,  they  had  also  every 
reason  to  feel  their  need  of  Him.  For  the  Exile  had 
not  healed  the  nation ;  it  had  been  for  the  most  of 
them  an  illustration  of  that  evil  effect  of  punishment  to 
which  we  alluded  above.  Penal  servitude  in  Babylon 
had  but  hardened  Israel.  God  poured  on  him  the  fury 
of  anger,  and  the  strength  of  battle :  it  set  him  on  fire 
round  about,  yet  he  knew  not ;  and  it  burned  him,  yet  he 
laid  it  not  to  heari*  What  the  Exile,  then,  had  failed 
to  do,  when  it  brought  upon  the  people  their  own  sins, 
the  Servant,  taking  these  sins  upon  himself,  would 
surely  effect.  The  people,  whom  the  Exile  had  only 
hardened,  his  vicarious  suffering  should  strike  into 
penitence  and  lift  to  peace. 

IV.  Ch.  liii.  7-9.  It  is  probable  that  with  ver.  6  the 
penitent  people  have  ceased  speaking,  and  that  the 
parable  is  now  taken  up  by  the  prophet  himself  The 
voice  of  God,  which  uttered  the  first  strophe,  does  not 
seem  to  resume  till  ver.  11. 

If  strophe  iii.  confessed  that  it  was  for  the  people's 
sins  the  Servant  suffered,  strophe  iv.  declares  that  he 
himself  was  sinless,  and  yet  silently  submitted  to  all 
which  injustice  laid  upon  him. 

Now  Silence  under  Suffering  is  a  strange  thing  in  the 

*  Ch.  xlii.  25. 


360  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

Old  Testament — a  thing  absolutely  new.  No  other  Old 
Testament  personage  could  stay  dumb  under  pain,  but 
immediately  broke  into  one  of  two  voices, — voice  of 
guilt  or  voice  of  doubt.  In  the  Old  Testament  the 
sufferer  is  always  either  confessing  his  guilt  to  God,  or, 
when  he  feels  no  guilt,  challenging  God  in  argument- 
David,  Hezekiah,  Jeremiah,  Job,  and  the  nameless 
martyred  and  moribund  of  the  Psalms,  all  strive  and  are 
loud  under  pain.  Why  was  this  Servant  the  unique 
and  solitary  instance  of  silence  under  suffering  ?  Be- 
cause he  had  a  secret  which  they  had  not.  It  had  been 
said  of  him  :  My  Servant  shall  deal  wisely  or  intelligently, 
shall  know  what  he  is  about.  He  had  no  guilt  of  his 
own,  no  doubts  of  his  God.  But  he  was  conscious  of  the 
end  God  had  in  his  pain,  an  end  not  to  be  served  in  any 
other  way,  and  with  all  his  heart  he  had  given  himself 
to  it.  It  was  not  punishment  he  was  enduring  ;  it  was 
not  the  throes  of  the  birth  into  higher  experience, 
which  he  was  feeling :  it  was  a  Service  he  was  per- 
forming,— a  service  laid  on  him  by  God,  a  service  for 
man's  redemption,  a  service  sure  of  results  and  of  glory. 
Therefore  as  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter  is  led,  and  as  a 
sheep  before  her  shearers  is  dumb,  he  opened  not  his 
mouth. 

The  next  two  verses  (8,  9)  describe  how  the  Servant's 
Passion  w^as  fuliilied.  The  figure  of  a  sick  man  was 
changed  in  ver.  5  to  that  of  a  punished  one,  and  the 
punishment  we  now  see  carried  on  to  death.  The  two 
verses  are  difficult,  the  readings  and  renderings  of  most 
of  the  words  being  very  various.  But  the  sense  is  clear. 
The  Servant's  death  was  accomplished,  not  on  some  far 
hill  top  by  a  stroke  out  of  heaven,  but  in  the  forms  of 
human  law  and  by  men's  hands.  It  was  a  judicial 
murder.     By  tyranny  and  by  judgement, — that  is,  by  a 


Hi.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  361 

• . 

forced  and  tyrannous  judgement, — he  was  taken.  To  this 
abuse  of  law  the  next  verse  adds  the  indifference  of  public 
opinion  :  and  as  for  his  contemporaries^  who  of  them  re- 
flected that  he  was  cut  off  from  ^  or  cut  down  in,  the  land  of 
theliving, — that  in  spite  of  the  form  of  law  that  condemned 
him  he  was  a  murdered  man, — that /or  the  transgression 
of  my  people  the  stroke  was  his  ?  So,  having  conceived 
him  to  have  been  lawfully  put  to  death,  they  consistently 
gave  him  a  convict's  grave  :  they  made  his  grave  with  the 
wicked,  and  he  was  with  the  felon  in  his  death,  though 
— and  on  this  the  strophe  emphatically  ends — he  was  an 
innocent  man,  he  had  done  no  harm,  neither  was  guile 
in  his  mouth. 

Premature  sickness  and  the  miscarriage  of  justice, — 
these  to  Orientals  are  the  two  outstanding  misfortunes 
of  the  individual's  life.  Take  the  Psalter,  set  aside  its 
complaints  of  the  horrors  of  war  and  of  invasion,  and 
you  will  find  almost  all  the  rest  of  its  sighs  rising  either 
from  sickness  or  from  the  sense  of  injustice.  These 
were  the  classic  forms  of  individual  suffering  in  the  age 
and  civihsation  to  which  our  prophet  belonged,  and  it 
was  natural,  therefore,  that  when  he  was  describing  an 
Ideal  or  Representative  Sufferer,  he  should  fill  in  his 
picture  with  both  of  them.  If  we  remember  this,*  we 
shall  feel  no  incongruity  in  the  sudden  change  of  the 
hero  from  a  sick  man  to  a  convict,  and  back  again  in 

*  If  we  remember  this  we  shall  also  feel  more  reason  than  ever 
against  perceiving  the  Nation,  or  any  aspect  of  the  Nation,  in  the 
Sufferer  of  ch.  liii.  For  he  suffers,  as  the  individual  suffers,  sickness 
and  legal  wrong.  Tyrants  do  not  put  whole  nations  through  a  form 
of  law  and  judgement.  Of  course,  it  is  open  to  those,  who  hold  that 
the  Servant  is  still  an  aspect  of  the  Nation,  to  reply,  that  all  this  is 
simply  evidence  of  how  far  the  prophet  has  pushed  his  personification. 
A  whole  nation  has  been  called  "  The  Sick  Man "  even  in  our 
prosaic  days.     But  see  pp.  268-76. 


362  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

ver.  10  from  a  convict  to  a  sick  man.  Nor,  if  we  remem- 
ber this,  shall  we  feel  disposed  to  listen  to  those  inter- 
preters, who  hold  that  the  basis  of  this  prophecy  was 
the  account  of  an  actual  historical  martyrdom.  Had 
such  been  the  case  the  prophet  would  surely  have  held 
throughout  to  one  or  the  other  of  the  tv/o  forms  of 
suffering.  His  sufferer  would  have  been  either  a  leper 
or  a  convict,  but  hardly  both.  No  doubt  the  details  in 
vv.  8  and  9  are  so  realistic  that  they  might  well  be  the 
features  of  an  actual  miscarriage  of  justice  ;  but  the  Hke 
happened  too  frequently  in  the  Ancient  East  for  such 
verses  to  be  necessarily  any  one  man's  portrait.  Per- 
verted justice  was  the  curse  of  the  individual's  life, — • 
perverted  justice  and  that  stolid,  fatalistic  apathy  of 
Oriental  public  opinion,  which  would  probably  regard 
such  a  sufferer  as  suffering  for  his  sins  the  just  venge- 
ance of  heaven,  though  the  minister  of  this  vengeance 
was  a  tyrant  and  its  means  were  perjury  and  murder. 
Who  of  his  generation  reflected  that  for  the  transgression 
of  my  people  the  stroke  was  on  him  ! 

V.  Ch.  liii.  10 1 2.  We  have  heard  the  awful  tragedy. 
The  innocent  Servant  was  put  to  a  violent  and  prema- 
ture death.  Public  apathy  closed  over  him  and  the 
unmarked  earth  of  a  felon's  grave.  It  is  so  utter  a 
perversion  of  justice,  so  signal  a  triumph  of  wrong  over 
right,  so  final  a  disappearance  into  oblivion  of  the  fairest 
life  that  ever  lived,  that  men  might  be  tempted  to  say, 
God  has  forsaken  His  own.  On  the  contrary — so 
strophe  v.  begins — God's  own  will  and  pleasure  have 
been  in  this  tragedy  :  Yet  it  pleased  the  LORD  to  bruise 
him.  The  Hne  as  it  thus  stands  in  our  English  version 
has  a  grim,  repulsive  sound.  But  the  Hebrew  word  has 
no  necessary  meaning  of  pleasure  or  enjoyment.  All  it 
says  is,   God  so  willed  it.     His  purpose  was  in  this 


Hi.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  363 

tragedy.  Deus  vult !  It  is  the  one  message  which 
can  render  any  pain  tolerable  or  light  up  with  meaning 
a  mystery  so  cruel  as  this :  The  LORD  Himself  had 
purposed  to  bruise  His  Servant,  the  LORD  Himself 
had  laid  on  him  sickness  (the  figure  of  disease  is 
resumed). 

God's  purpose  in  putting  the  Servant  to  death  is 
explained  in  the  rest  of  the  verse.  It  was  in  order  that 
through  his  soul  making  a  guilt- offering,  he  might  see  a 
seed,  prolong  his  days,  and  that  the  pleasure  of  the  Lord 
might  prosper  by  his  hand. 

What  is  a  guilt-offering  ?  The  term  originally  meant 
guilt,  and  is  so  used  by  a  prophet  contemporary  to  our 
own.*  In  the  legislation,  however,  both  in  the  Penta- 
teuch and  in  Ezekiel,  it  is  applied  to  legal  and  sacrificial 
forms  of  restitution  or  reparation  for  guilt.  It  is  only 
named  in  Ezekiel  along  with  other  sacrifices.!  Both 
Numbers  and  Leviticus  define  it,  but  define  it  differently. 
In  Numbers  (v.  7,  8)  it  is  the  payment,  which  a  trans- 
gressor has  to  make  to  the  human  person  offended,  of  the 
amount  to  which  he  has  harmed  that  person's  property  : 
it  is  what  we  call  damages.  But  in  Leviticus  it  is  the 
ram,  exacted  over  and  above  damages  to  the  injured 
party  (v.  14-16;  vi.  1-7),  or  in  cases  where  no  damages 
were  asked  for  (v.  17-19),  by  the  priest,  the  representa- 
tive of  God,  for  satisfaction  to  His  law ;  and  it  was 
required  even  where  the  offender  had  been  an  unwitting 
one.  By  this  guilt-offering  the  priest  made  atonement  for 
the  sinner  and  he  was  forgiven.  It  was  for  this  purpose 
of  reparation  to  the  Deity  that  the  plagued  Philistines 
sent  a  guilt-offering  back  with  the  ark  of  Jehovah, 
which  they  had  stolen.  |     But  there  is  another  historical 

*  Jer.  li.  4.  f  xl.  39  ;  xlii.  13  ;  xliv.  29  ;  xlvi.  20 

J   I  Sam.  vi.  13. 


364  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

passage,  which  though  the  term  guilt-offering  is  not 
used  in  it,  admirably  illustrates  the  idea.*  A  famine  in 
David's  time  was  revealed  to  be  due  to  the  murder  of 
certain  Gibeonites  by  the  house  of  Saul.  David  asked 
the  Gibeonites  what  reparation  he  could  make.  They 
said  it  was  not  a  matter  of  damages.  But  both  parties 
felt  that  before  the  law  of  God  could  be  satisfied  and 
the  land  relieved  of  its  curse,  some  atonement,  some 
guilt-offering,  must  be  made  to  the  Divine  Law.  It  was 
a  wild  kind  of  satisfaction  that  was  paid.  Seven  men 
of  Saul's  house  v/ere  hung  up  before  the  Lord  in 
Gibeon.  But  the  instinct,  though  satisfied  in  so  mur- 
derous a  fashion,  was  a  true  and  a  grand  instinct, — 
the  conscience  of  a  law  above  all  human  laws  and  rights, 
to  which  homage  must  be  paid  before  the  sinner  could 
come  into  true  relations  with  God,  or  the  Divine  curse 
be  lifted  off. 

It  is  in  this  sense  that  the  word  is  used  of  the  Servant 
of  Jehovah,  the  Ideal,  Representative  Sufferer.  Innocent 
as  he  is,  he  gives  his  life  as  satisfaction  to  the  Divine 
law  for  the  guilt  of  his  people.  His  death  was  no 
mere  martyrdom  or  miscarriage  of  human  justice :  in 
God's  intent  and  purpose,  but  also  by  its  own  voluntary 
offering,  it  was  an  expiatory  sacrifice.!  By  his  death 
the  Servant  did  homage  to  the  law  of  God.  By 
dying   for   it   He   made   men   feel   that  the    supreme 


*  Cf.  Wellhausen's  Prolegomena,  ch,  ii.,  2. 

■j-  There  is  no  exegele  but  agrees  to  this.  There  may  be  differences 
of  opinion  about  the  syntax, — whether  the  verse  should  run,  though 
Thou  makest  his  soul  guilt,  or  a  guilt-offering ;  or,  though  his  soul 
make  a  guilt-offering]  or  (reading  W^Z*^  for  D''i^'^),  while  he  makes 
his  soul  a  guilt-offering, — but  all  agree  to  the  fact  that  by  himself  or 
by  God  the  Servant's  life  is  offered  an  expiation  for  sin,  a  satisfaction 
to  the  law  of  God. 


Hi,  i3-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  365 

end  of  man  was  to  own  that  law  and  be  in  a  right 
relation  to  it,  and  that  the  supreme  service  was  to  help 
others  to  a  right  relation.  As  it  is  said  a  little  farther 
down,  My  Servant,  righteous  himself ^  wins  righteousness 
for  many,  and  makes  their  iniquities  his  load. 

It  surely  cannot  be  difficult  for  any  one,  who  knows 
what  sin  is,  and  what  a  part  vicarious  suffering  plays 
both  in  the  bearing  of  the  sin  and  in  the  redemption  of 
the  sinner,  to  perceive  that  at  this  point  the  Servant's 
service  for  God  and  man  reaches  its  crown.  Compare 
his  death  and  its  sad  meaning,  with  the  brilliant  ener- 
gies of  his  earlier  career.  It  is  a  heavy  and  an  honour- 
able thing  to  come  from  God  to  men,  laden  with  God's 
truth  for  your  charge  and  responsibility ;  but  it  is  a  far 
heavier  to  stoop  and  take  upon  your  heart  as  your 
business  and  burden  men's  suffering  and  sin.  It  is  a 
needful  and  a  lovely  thing  to  assist  the  feeble  aspira- 
tions of  men,  to  put  yourself  on  the  side  of  whatever 
in  them  is  upward  and  living, — to  be  the  shelter,  as  the 
Servant  was,  of  the  bruised  reed  and  the  fading  wick ; 
but  it  is  more  indispensable,  and  it  is  infinitely  heavier, 
to  seek  to  lift  the  deadness  of  men,  to  take  their  guilt 
upon  your  heart,  to  attempt  to  rouse  them  to  it,  to 
attempt  to  deliver  them  from  it.  It  is  a  useful  and  a 
glorious  thing  to  estabUsh  order  and  justice  among  men, 
to  create  a  social  conscience,  to  inspire  the  exercise 
of  love  and  the  habits  of  service,  and  this  the  Servant 
did  when  he  set  Law  on  the  Earth,  and  the  Isles  waited  for 
his  teaching ;  but  after  all  man's  supreme  and  controlling 
relation  is  his  relation  to  God,  and  to  this  their  right- 
eousness the  Servant  restored  guilty  men  by  his  death. 

And  so  it  was  at  this  point,  according  to  our  prophecy, 
that  the  Servant,  though  brought  so  low,  was  nearest  his 
exaltation  :  though  in  death,  yet  nearest  life,  nearest  the 


366  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

highest  kind  of  Hfe,  the  seeing  of  a  seed,  the  finding  of 
himself  in  others  ;  though  despised,  rejected  and  for- 
gotten of  men,  most  certain  of  finding  a  place  among  the 
great  and  notable  forces  of  life, — therefore  do  I  divide 
him  a  share  with  the  great,  and  the  spoil  he  shall  share  with 
the  strong.  Not  because  as  a  prophet  he  was  a  sharp 
sword  in  the  hand  of  the  Lord,  or  a  light  flashing  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  but  in  that — as  the  prophecy 
concludes,  and  it  is  the  prophet's  last  and  highest 
word  concerning  him — in  that  he  bare  the  sin  of  the 
many,  and  interposed  for  the  transgressors. 


We  have  seen  that  the  most  striking  thing  about 
this  prophecy  is  the  spectral  appearance  of  the  Servant. 
He  haunts,  rather  than  is  present  in,  the  chapter. 
We  hear  of  him,  but  he  himself  does  not  speak. 
We  see  faces  that  he  startles,  lips  that  the  sight  of 
him  shuts,  lips  that  the  memory  of  him,  after  he  has 
passed  in  silence,  opens  to  bitter  confession  of  neg- 
lect and  misunderstanding  ;  but  himself  we  see  not. 
His  aspect  and  his  bearing,  his  work  for  God  and 
his  influence  on  men,  are  shown  to  us,  through  the 
recollection  and  conscience  of  the  speakers,  with  a  vivid- 
ness and  a  truth  that  draw  the  consciences  of  us  who 
hear  into  the  current  of  the  confession,  and  take  our 
hearts  captive.  But  when  we  ask,  Who  was  he  then  ? 
What  was  his  name  among  men  ?  Where  shall  we 
find  himself?  Has  he  come,  or  do  you  still  look  for 
him  ? — neither  the  speakers,  whose  conscience  he  so 
smote,  nor  God,  whose  chief  purpose  he  was,  give  us 
here  any  answer.  In  some  verses  he  and  his  work 
seem  already  to  have  happened  upon  earth,  but  again 
we  are  made  to  feel  that  he  is  still  future  to  the  prophet, 


Hi.  I3-Iiii.l  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  367 

and  that  the  voices,  which  the  prophet  quotes  as 
speaking  of  having  seen  him  and  found  him  to  be 
the  Saviour,  are  voices  of  a  day  not  yet  born,  while 
the  prophet  writes. 

But  about  five  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  this 
prophecy  was  written,  a  Man  came  forward  among  the 
sons  of  men, — among  this  very  nation  from  whom  the 
prophecy  had  arisen  ;  and  in  every  essential  of  con- 
sciousness and  of  experience  He  was  the  counterpart, 
embodiment  and  fulfilment  of  this  Suffering  Servant 
and  his  Service.  Jesus  Christ  answers  the  questions, 
which  the  prophecy  raises  and  leaves  unanswered.  In 
the  prophecy  we  see  one,  who  is  only  a  spectre,  a  dream, 
a  conscience  without  a  voice,  without  a  name,  without  a 
place  in  history.  But  in  Jesus  Christ  of  Nazareth  the 
dream  becomes  a  reality ;  He,  whom  we  have  seen  in 
this  chapter  only  as  the  purpose  of  God,  only  through 
the  eyes  and  consciences  of  a  generation  yet  unborn, — 
He  comes  forward  in  flesh  and  blood ;  He  speaks.  He 
explains  Himself,  He  accomplishes  almost  to  the  last 
detail  the  work,  the  patience  and  the  death  that  are  here 
described  as  Ideal  and  Representative. 

The  correspondence  of  details  between  Christ's  life 
and  this  prophecy,  published  five  hundred  and  fifty 
years  before  He  came,  is  striking ;  if  we  encountered 
it  for  the  first  time,  it  would  be  more  than  striking,  it 
would  be  staggering.  But  do  not  let  us  do  what  so 
many  have  done — so  fondly  exaggerate  it  as  to  lose 
in  the  details  of  external  resemblance  the  moral  and 
spiritual  identity. 

For  the  external  correspondence  between  this  pro- 
phecy and  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ  is  by  no  means  perfect. 
Every  wound  that  is  set  down  in  the  fifty-third  of 
Isaiah  was  not  reproduced  or  fulfilled  in  the  sufferings 


368  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

of  Jesus.  For  instance,  Christ  was  not  the  sick,  plague- 
stricken  man,  whom  the  Servant  is  at  first  represented 
to  be.  The  English  translators  have  masked  the  leprous 
figure,  that  stands  out  so  clearly  in  the  original  Hebrew, 
— for  acquainted  with  grief,  bearing  our  griefs,  put  him 
to  grief  we  should  in  each  case  read  sickness.  Now 
Christ  was  no  Job.  As  Matthew  points  out,  the  only 
way  He  could  be  said  to  bear  our  sicknesses  and  to  carry 
our  pains  was  by  healing  them,  not  by  sharing  them. 

And  again,  exactly  as  the  judicial  murder  of  the  Ser- 
vant, and  the  entire  absence  from  his  contemporaries  of 
any  idea  that  he  suffered  a  vicarious  death,  suit  the  case 
of  Christ,  the  next  stage  in  the  Servant's  fate  was  not 
true  of  the  Victim  of  Pilate  and  the  Pharisees.  Christ's 
grave  was  not  with  the  wicked.  He  suffered  as  a  felon 
without  the  walls  on  the  common  place  of  execution,  but 
friends  received  the  body  and  gave  it  an  honourable 
burial  in  a  friend's  grave.  Or  take  the  clause,  with  the 
rich  in  his  death.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  word  is 
really  rich,  and  ought  not  to  be  a  closer  synonym  of 
wicked  in  the  previous  clause ;  but  if  it  be  rich,  it  is 
simply  another  name  for  the  wicked,  who  in  the  East,  in 
cases  of  miscarried  justice,  are  so  often  coupled  with  the 
evildoers.  It  cannot  possibly  denote  such  a  man  as 
Joseph  of  Arimathea ;  nor,  is  it  to  be  observed,  do  the 
Evangelists  in  describing  Christ's  burial  in  that  rich  and 
pious  man's  tomb  take  any.  notice  of  this  line  about  the 
Suffering  Servant. 

But  the  absence  of  a  complete  incidental  correspond- 
ence only  renders  more  striking  the  moral  and  spiritual 
correspondence,  the  essential  likeness  between  the 
Service  set  forth  in  ch.  liii.  and  the  work  of  our  Lord. 

The  speakers  of  ch.  liii.  set  the  Servant  over  against 
themselves,  and  in  solitariness  of  character  and  office. 


lii.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  369 

They  count  him  alone  sinless  where  all  they  have 
sinned,  and  him  alone  the  agent  of  salvation  and 
healing  where  their  whole  duty  is  to  look  on  and 
believe.  But  this  is  precisely  the  relation  which 
Christ  assumed  between  Himself  and  the  nation.  He 
was  on  one  side,  all  they  on  the  other.  Against  their 
strong  effort  to  make  Him  the  First  among  them,  it  was, 
as  we  have  said  before,  the  constant  aim  of  our  Lord 
to  assert  and  to  explain  Himself  as  The  Only. 

And  this  Onlyness  was  to  be  reahsed  in  suffering. 
He  said,  /  must  suffer;  or  again.  It  behoves  the  Christ  to 
suffer.  Suffering  is  the  experience  in  which  men  feel 
their  oneness  with  their  kind.  Christ,  too,  by  suffering 
felt  His  oneness  with  men;  but  largely  in  order  to 
assert  a  singularity  beyond.  Through  suffering  He 
became  like  unto  men,  but  only  that  He  might  effect 
through  suffering  a  lonely  and  a  singular  service  for 
them.  For  though  He  suffered  in  all  points  as  men  did, 
yet  He  shared  none  of  their  universal  feelings  about 
suffering.  Pain  never  drew  from  Him  either  of  those  two 
voices  of  guilt  or  of  doubt.  Pain  never  reminded  Christ 
of  His  own  past,  nor  made  Him  question  God. 

Nor  did  He  seek  pain  for  any  end  in  itself.  There 
have  been  men  who  have  done  so ;  fanatics  who  have 
gloried  in  pain ;  superstitious  minds  that  have  fancied 
it  to  be  meritorious  ;  men  whose  wounds  have  been 
as  mouths  to  feed  their  pride,  or  to  publish  their  fidehty 
to  their  cause.  But  our  Lord  shrank  from  pain  ;  if  it 
had  been  possible  He  would  have  willed  not  to  bear  it : 
Father,  save  Me  from  this  hour;  Father,  if  it  be  Thy  will, 
let  this  cup  pass  from  Me.  And  when  He  submitted  and 
was  under  the  agony,  it  was  not  in  the  feeling  of  it,  nor 
in  the  impression  it  made  on  others,  nor  in  the  manner 
in  which  it  drew  men's  hearts  to  Him,  nor  in  the  seal 

VOL.  II.  24 


370  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

it  set  on  the  truth,  but  in  something  beyond  it,  that  He 
found  His  end  and  satisfaction.  Jesus  looked  out  of 
the  travail  of  His  soul  and  was  satisfied. 

For,  firstly,  He  knew  His  pain  to  be  God's  will  for  an 
and  outside  Himself, — /  have  a  baptism  to  be  baptized 
with,  and  how  am  I  straitened  till  it  be  accomplished : 
Father,  save  Me  from  this  hour,  yet  for  this  cause  came  I 
to  this  hour :  Father,  Thy  will  be  done, — and  all  oppor- 
tunities to  escape  as  temptations. 

And,  secondly,  like  the  Servant,  Jesus  dealt  prudently, 
had  insight.  The  will  of  God  in  His  suffering  was  no 
mystery  to  Him.  He  understood  from  the  first  why 
He  was  to  suffer.* 

The  reasons  He  gave  were  thje  same  two  and  in 
the  same  order  as  are  given  by  our  prophet  for  the 
sufferings  of  the  Servant, — first,  that  fidelity  to  God's 
truth  could  bring  with  it  no  other  fate  in  Israel ;  f  then 
that  His  death  was  necessary  for  the  sins  of  men,  and 
as  men's  ransom  from  sin.  In  giving  the  first  of  these 
reasons  for  His  death,  Christ  likened  Himself  to  the 
prophets  who  had  gone  before  Him  in  Jerusalem ;  but 
in  the  second  He  matched  Himself  with  no  other,  and 
no  other  has  ever  been  known  in  this  to  match  himself 
with  Jesus. 

When  men,  then,  stand  up  and  tell  us  that  Christ 
suffered  only  for  the  sake  of  sympathy  with  His  kind,  or 
only  for  loyalty  to  the  truth,  we  have  to  tell  them  that 
this  was  not  the  whole  of  Christ's  own  consciousness, 
this  was  not  the  whole  of  Christ's  own  explanation. 
Suffering,  which  leads  men  into  the  sense  of  oneness 

*  Cf.  Baldenspcrger  {Das  Selbstbewusstsein  Jesu,  p.  119  ff.)  on  the 
genuineness  of  Christ's  predictions  and  explanations  of  His  sufferings. 

t  Cf.  p.  330. 


Hi.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  371 


with  their  kind,  only  made  Him,  as  it  grew  the  nearer  and 
weighed  the  heavier,  more  emphatic  upon  His  difference  . 
from  other  men.  If  He  Himself,  by  His  pity,  by  His 
labours  of  healing  (as  Matthew  points  out),  and  by  all  His 
intercourse  with  His  people,  penetrated  more  deeply 
into  the  participation  of  human  suffering,  the  very  days 
which  marked  with  increasing  force  His  sympathy  with 
men,  only  laid  more  bare  their  want  of  sympathy  with 
Him,  their  incapacity  to  follow  into  that  unique  con- 
science and  understanding  of  a  Passion,  which  He  bore 
not  only  with,  but,  as  He  said,  for  His  brethren.  Who 
believed  that  which  we  heard,  and  to  whom  was  the  arm  of 
the  Lord  revealed?  As  to  His  generation^  who  reflected .  .  . 
that  for  the  transgression  of  my  people  He  was  stricken  ? 
Again,  while  Christ  indeed  brought  truth  to  earth  from 
heaven,  and  was  for  truth's  sake  condemned  by  men  to 
die,  the  burden  which  He  found  waiting  Him  on  earth, 
man's  sin,  was  ever  felt  by  Him  to  be  a  heavier  burden 
and  responsibility  than  the  delivery  of  the  truth ;  and  was 
in  fact  the  thing,  which,  apart  from  the  things  for  which 
men  might  put  Him  to  death,  remained  the  reason  of 
His  death  in  His  own  sight  and  in  that  of  His  Father. 
And  He  told  men  why  He  felt  their  sin  to  be  so  heavy, 
because  it  kept  them  so  far  from  God,  and  this  was  His 
purpose.  He  said,  in  bearing  it — that  He  might  bring 
us  back  to  God  ;  not  primarily  that  He  might  relieve  us 
of  the  suffering  which  followed  sin,  though  He  did  so 
relieve  some  when  He  pardoned  them,  but  that  He 
might  restore  us  to  right  relations  with  God, — might,  like 
the  Servant,  make  many  righteous.  Now  it  was  Christ's 
confidence  to  be  able  to  do  this,  which  distinguished 
Him  from  all  others,  upon  whom  has  most  heavily  fallen 
the  conscience  of  their  people's  sins,  and  who  have 
most  keenly  felt  the  duty  and  commission  from  God 


372  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

of  vicarious  suffering.  If,  like  Moses,  one  sometimes 
,  dared  for  love's  sake  to  offer  his  life  for  the  life  of  his 
people,  none,  under  the  conscience  and  pain  of  their 
people's  sins,  ever  expressed  any  consciousness  of 
thereby  making  their  brethren  righteous.  On  the  con- 
trary, even  a  Jeremiah,  whose  experience,  as  we  have 
seen,  comes  so  wonderfully  near  the  picture  of  the  Re- 
presentative Sufferer  in  ch,  liii., — even  a  Jeremiah  feels, 
with  the  increase  of  his  vicarious  pain  and  conscience 
of  guilt,  only  the  more  perplexed,  only  the  deeper  in 
despair,  only  the  less  able  to  understand  God  and  the 
less  hopeful  to  prevail  wath  Him.  But  Christ  was  sure 
of  His  power  to  remove  men's  sins,  and  was  never  more 
emphatic  about  that  power  than  when  He  most  felt  those 
sins'  weight. 

And  He  has  seen  His  seed;  He  has  made  many 
righteous.  We  found  it  to  be  uncertain  whether  the 
penitent  speakers  in  ch.  liii.  understood  that  the  Ser- 
vant by  coming  under  the  physical  sufferings,  which  were 
the  consequences  of  their  sins,  relieved  them  of  these 
consequences  ;  other  passages  in  the  prophecy  would 
seem  to  imply,  that,  while  the  Servant's  sufferings  were 
alone  valid  for  righteousness,  they  did  not  relieve  the  rest 
of  the  nation  from  suffering  too.  And  so  it  would  be 
going  beyond  what  God  has  given  us  to  know,  if  w^e  said 
that  God  counts  the  sufferings  on  the  Cross,  which  were 
endured  for  our  sins,  as  an  equivalent  for,  or  as  suffi- 
cient to  do  away  with,  the  sufferings  which  these  sins 
bring  upon  our  minds,  our  bodies  and  our  social  rela- 
tions. Substitution  of  this  kind  is  neither  affirmed  by 
the  penitents  who  speak  in  the  fifty-third  of  Isaiah,  nor 
is  it  an  invariable  or  essential  part  of  the  experience 
of  those  who  have  found  forgiveness  through  Christ. 
Every  day  penitents  turn  to  God  through  Christ,  and 


lii.  13-liii.]  THE  SUFFERING  SERVANT.  373 

are  assured  of  forgiveness,  who  feel  no  abatement  in 
the  rigour  of  the  retribution  of  those  laws  of  God, 
which  they  have  offended ;  like  David  after  his  forgive- 
ness, they  have  to  continue  to  bear  the  consequences 
of  their  sins.  But  dark  as  this  side  of  experience  un- 
doubtedly is,  only  the  more  conspicuously  against  the 
darkness  does  the  other  side  of  experience  shine.  By 
believing  what  they  have  heard ^  reaching  this  belief 
through  a  quicker  conscience  and  a  closer  study  of 
Christ's  words  about  His  death,  men,  upon  whom  con- 
science by  itself  and  sore  punishment  have  worked  in 
vain,  have  been  struck  into  penitence,  have  been  assured 
of  pardon,  have  been  brought  into  right  relations  with 
God,  have  felt  all  the  melting  and  the  bracing  effects  of 
the  knowledge  that  another  has  suffered  in  their  stead. 
Nay,  let  us  consider  this — the  physical  consequences  of 
their  sins  may  have  been  left  to  be  endured  by  such 
men,  for  no  other  reason  than  in  order  to  make  their 
new  relation  to  God  more  sensible  to  them,  while  they 
feel  those  consequences  no  longer  with  the  feeling  of 
penalty,  but  with  that  of  chastisement  and  discipline. 
Surely  nothing  could  serve  more  strongly  than  this  to 
reveal  the  new  conscience  towards  God  that  has  been 
worked  within  them.  This  inward  righteousness  is 
made  more  plain  by  the  continuance  of  the  physical 
and  social  consequences  of  their  sins  than  it  would 
have  been  had  these  consequences  been  removed. 

Thus  Christ,  like  the  Servant,  became  a  force  in  the 
world,  inheriting  in  the  course  of  Providence  a  portion 
with  the  great  and  dividing  the  spoils  of  history  with  the 
strong.  As  has  often  been  said.  His  Cross  is  His 
Throne,  and  it  is  by  His  death  that  He  has  ruled  the 
ages.  Yet  we  must  not  understand  this  as  if  His 
Power  was  only  or  mostly  shown  in  binding  men,  by 


374  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

gratitude  for  the  salvation  He  won  them,  to  own  Him 
for  their  King.  His  power  has  been  even  more  con- 
spicuously proved  in  making  His  fashion  of  service 
the  most  fruitful  and  the  most  honoured  among  men. 
If  men  have  ceased  to  turn  from  sickness  with  aversion 
or  from  weakness  with  contempt ;  if  they  have  learned 
to  see  in  all  pain  some  law  of  God,  and  in  vicarious 
suffering  God's  most  holy  service  ;  if  patience  and  self- 
sacrifice  have  come  in  any  way  to  be  a  habit  of  human 
life, — the  power  in  this  change  has  been  Christ.  But 
because  these  two — to  say.  Thy  will  be  done,  and  to 
sacrifice  self — are  for  us  men  the  hardest  and  the  most 
unnatural  of  things  to  do,  Jesus  Christ,  in  making  these 
a  conscience  and  a  habit  upon  earth,  has  indeed  shown 
Himself  able  to  divide  the  spoil  with  the  strong,  has 
indeed  performed  the  very  highest  Service  for  Man  of 
which  man  can  conceive. 


BOOK  IV. 
THE  RESTORATION. 


BOOK  IV. 

WE  have  now  reached  the  summit  of  our  prophecy. 
It  has  been  a  long,  steep  ascent,  and  we  have 
had  very  much  to  seek  out  on  the  way,  and  to  extricate 
and  solve  and  load  ourselves  with.  But  although  a 
long  extent  of  the  prophecy,  if  we  measure  it  by 
chapters,  still  lies  before  us,  the  end  is  in  sight ;  every 
difficulty  has  been  surmounted  which  kept  us  from 
seeing  how  we  were  to  get  to  it,  and  the  rest  of  the 
way  may  be  said  to  be  down-hill. 

To  drop  the  figure — the  Servant,  his  vicarious  suffer- 
ing and  atonement  for  the  sins  of  the  people,  form  for 
our  prophet  the  solution  of  the  spiritual  problem  of 
the  nation's  restoration,  and  what  he  has  now  to  do  is 
but  to  fill  in  the  details  of  this. 

We  saw  that  the  problem  of  Israel's  deliverance  from 
Exile,  their  Return,  and  their  Restoration  to  their  posi- 
tion in  their  own  land  as  the  Chief  Servant  of  God  to 
humanity,  was  really  a  double  problem — political  and 
spiritual.  The  solution  of  the  political  side  of  it  was 
Cyrus.  As  soon  as  the  prophet  had  been  able  to  make 
it  certain  that  Cyrus  was  moving  down  upon  Babylon, 
with  a  commission  from  God  to  take  the  city,  and  irre- 
sistible in  the  power  with  which  Jehovah  had  invested 
him,  the  political  difficulties  in  the  way  of  Israel's  Return 
were  as  good  as  removed ;  and  so  the  prophet  gave,  in 
the  end  of  ch.  xlviii.,  his  great  call  to  his  countrymen  to 


378  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

depart.  But  all  through  chs.  xl.-xlviii.,  while  addressing 
himself  to  the  solution  of  the  political  problems  of  Israel's 
deliverance,  the  prophet  had  given  hints  that  there  were 
moral  and  spiritual  difficulties  as  well.  In  spite  of  their 
punishment  for  more  than  half  a  century,  the  mass  of 
the  people  were  not  worthy  of  a  return.  Many  were 
idolaters ;  many  were  worldly ;  the  orthodox  had  their 
own  wrong  views  of  how  salvation  should  come(xlv.9  ff.); 
the  pious  were  without  either  light  or  faith  (1.  lo).  The 
nation,  in  short,  had  not  that  inward  righteousness,  which 
could  alone  justify  God  in  vindicating  them  before  the 
world,  in  establishing  their  outward  righteousness,  their 
salvation  and  reinstatement  in  their  lofty  place  and  call- 
ing as  His  people.  These  moral  difficulties  come  upon 
the  prophet  with  greater  force  after  he  has,  with  the  close 
of  ch.  xlviii,,  finished  his  solution  of  the  political  ones. 
To  these  moral  difficulties  he  addresses  himself  in 
xlix.-liii.,  and  the  Servant  and  his  Service  are  his 
solution  of  them  : — the  Servant  as  a  Prophet  and  a 
Covenant  of  the  People  in  ch.  xlix.  and  in  ch.  1.  4  ff.  : 
the  Servant  as  an  example  to  the  people,  ch.  1.  ff. ;  and 
finally  the  Servant  as  a  full  expiation  for  the  people's 
sins  in  ch.  lii.  13-liii.  It  is  the  Servant  who  is  to  raise 
up  the  land,  and  to  bring  back  the  heirs  to  the  desolate 
heritages,  and  rouse  the  Israel  who  are  not  willing  to 
leave  Babylon,  saying  to  the  bound,  Go  forth;  and  to  them 
that  sit  in  darkness.  Show  yourselves  (xlix.  8,  9).  It  is 
he  who  is  to  sustain  the  weary  and  to  comfort  the  pious 
in  Israel,  who,  though  pious,  have  no  light  as  they  walk 
on  their  way  back  (1.  4,  10).  It  is  the  Servant  finally 
who  is  to  achieve  the  main  problem  of  all  and  make 
many  righteous  (Hii.  ii).  The  hope  of  restoration,  the 
certainty  of  the  people's  redemption,  the  certainty  of 
the  rebuilding  of  Jerusalem,  the  certainty  of  the  growth 


BOOK  IV.  379 


of  the  people  to  a  great  multitude,  are,  therefore,  all 
woven  by  the  prophet  through  and  through  with  his 
studies  of  the  Servant's  work  in  xlix.,  1.,  and  Hi.  13-liii., 
— woven  so  closely  and  so  naturally  that,  as  we  have 
already  seen  (pp.  313  f;  336  ff.),  we  cannot  take  any  part 
of  chs.  xlix.-liii.  and  say  that  it  is  of  different  author- 
ship from  the  rest.  Thus  in  ch.  xlix.  we  have  the  road 
to  Jerusalem  pictured  in  vv.  9^-13,  immediately  upon 
the  back  of  the  Servant's  call  to  go  forth  in  ver.  ga. 
We  have  then  the  assurance  of  Zion  being  rebuilt  and 
thronged  by  her  children  in  vv.  14-23,  and  another 
affirmation  of  the  certainty  of  redemption  in  vv.  24-26. 
In  1.  1-3  this  is  repeated.  In  li.-lii.  12  the  petty  people 
is  assured  that  it  shall  grow  innumerable  again ;  new 
affirmations  are  made  of  its  ransom  and  return,  ending 
with  the  beautiful  prospect  of  the  feet  of  the  heralds 
of  deliverance  on  the  mountains  of  Judah  (Hi.  yb)  and 
a  renewed  call  to  leave  Babylon  (vv.  1 1,  12).  We  shall 
treat  all  these  passages  in  our  Twenty-First  Chapter. 

And  as  they  started  naturally  from  the  Servant's 
work  in  xlix.  i-ga  and  his  example  in  1.  4-1 1,  so  upon 
his  final  and  crowning  work  in  ch.  liii.  there  follow 
as  naturally  ch.  liv.  (the  prospect  of  the  seed  that 
liii.  10  promised  he  should  see),  and  ch.  Iv.  (a  new  call 
to  come  forth).  These  two,  with  the  little  pre-exilic 
prophecy,  ch.  Ivi.  1-8,  we  shall  treat  in  our  Twenty- 
Second  Chapter. 

Then  come  the  series  of  difficult  small  prophecies 
with  pre-exilic  traces  in  them,  from  Ivi.  9-lix.  They  will 
occupy  our  Twenty-Third  Chapter.  In  ch.  Ix.  Zion  is 
at  last  not  only  in  sight,  but  radiant  in  the  rising  of  her 
new  day  of  glory.  In  chs.  Ixi.  and  Ixii.  the  prophet, 
having  reached  Zion,  ^' looks  back,"  as  Dillmann  well 
remarks,  "  upon  what  has  become  his  task,  and  in  con- 


38o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

nection  with  that  makes  clear  once  more  the  high  goal 
of  all  his  working  and  striving."  In  Ixiii.  1-6  the 
Divine  Deliverer  is  hailed.  We  shall  take  Ix.-lxiii.  6 
together  in  our  Twenty-Fourth  Chapter. 

Ch.  Ixiii.  7-lxiv.  is  an  Intercessory  Prayer  for  the 
restoration  of  all  Israel.  It  is  answered  in  ch.  Ixv.,  and 
the  lesson  of  this  answer,  that  Israel  must  be  judged, 
and  that  all  cannot  be  saved,  is  enforced  in  ch.  Ixvi. 
Chs.  Ixiii.  7-lxvi.  will  therefore  form  our  Twenty-Fifth 
and  closing  Chapter. 

Thus  our  course  is  clear,  and  we  can  overtake  it 
rapidly.  It  is,  to  a  large  extent,  a  series  of  spectacles, 
interrupted  by  exhortations  upon  duty ;  things,  in  fact, 
to  see  and  to  hear,  not  to  argue  about.  There  are  few 
great  doctrinal  questions,  except  what  we  have  already 
sufficiently  discussed ;  our  study,  for  instance,  of  the. 
term  righteousness,  we  shall  find  has  covered  for  us 
a  large  part  of  the  ground  in  advance.  And  the  only 
difficult  literary  question  is  that  of  the  pre-exilic  and 
post-exilic  pieces,  which  are  alleged  to  form  so  large  a 
part  of  chs.  Ivi.-hx.  and  Ixiii. -Ixvl 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

DOUBTS  IN   THE   WAY, 
Isaiah  xlix.-lii.  12. 

CHAPTERS  xlix.-liii.  are,  as  we  have  seen,  a  series 
of  more  or  less  closely  joined  passages,  in  which 
the  prophet,  having  already  made  the  political  redemp- 
tion of  Israel  certain  through  Cyrus,  and  having  dis- 
missed Cyrus  from  his  thoughts,  addresses  himself  to 
various  difficulties  in  the  way  of  restoration,  chiefly 
moral  and  spiritual,  and  rising  from  Israel's  own  feel- 
ings and  character ;  exhorts  the  people  in  face  of  them 
by  Jehovah's  faithfulness  and  power ;  but  finds  the 
chief  solution  of  them  in  the  Servant  and  his  prophetic 
and  expiatory  work.  We  have  already  studied  such  of 
these  passages  as  present  the  Servant  to  us,  and  we 
now  take  up  those  others,  which  meet  the  doubts  and 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  restoration  by  means  of  general 
considerations  drawn  from  God's  character  and  power. 
Let  it  be  noticed  that,  with  one  exception  (ch.  1.  11),* 
these  passages  are  meant  for  earnest  and  pious  minds  in 
Israel, — for  those  Israelites,  whose  desires  are  towards 
Zion,  but  chill  and  heavy  with  doubts. 

The  form  and  the  terms  of  these  passages  are  in 
harmony  with  their  purpose.      They  are  a  series    of 

*  See  p.  334. 


382  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

short,  high-pitched  exhortations,  apostrophes  and  lyrics. 
One,  ch.  hi.  9-12,  calls  upon  the  arm  of  Jehovah, 
but  all  the  rest  address  Zion, — that  is,  the  ideal  people 
in  the  person  of  their  mother,  with  whom  they  ever 
so  fondly  identified  themselves  ;  or  Zion's  children; 
or  them  that  follow  righteousness,  or  ye  that  know  right- 
eousness; or  my  people,  my  nation;  or  again  Zion 
herself.  This  personification  of  the  people  under  the 
name  of  their  city,  and  under  the  aspect  of  a  woman, 
whose  children  are  the  individual  members  pf  the 
people,  will  be  before  us  till  the  end  of  our  prophecy. 
It  is,  of  course,  a  personification  of  Israel,  which  is 
complementary  to  Israel's  other  personification  under 
the  name  of  the  Servant.  The  Servant  is  Israel 
active,  comforting,  serving  his  own  members  and  the 
nations  ;  Zion,  the  Mother-City,  is  Israel  passive,  to 
be  comforted,  to  be  served  by  her  own  sons  and  by 
the  kings  of  the  peoples. 

We  may  divide  the  passages  into  two  groups.  First, 
the  songs  of  return,  which  rise  out  of  the  picture  of  the 
Servant  and  his  redemption  of  the  people  in  ch.  xlix. 
gb,  with  the  long  promise  and  exhortation  to  Zion 
and  her  children,  that  lasts  till  the  second  picture  of 
the  Servant  in  ch.  Hi.  4 ;  and  second,  the  short  pieces 
which  lie  between  the  second  picture  of  the  Servant  and 
the  third,  or  from  the  beginning  of  ch.  li.  to  ch.  lii.  12. 


In  ch.  xlix.  gb  God's  promise  of  the  return  of  the 
redeemed  proceeds  naturally  from  that  of  their  ransom 
by  the  Servant.  It  is  hailed  by  a  song  in  ver.  13,  and 
the  rest  of  the  section  is  the  answer  to  three  doubts, 
which,  like  sobs,  interrupt  the  music.    But  the  prophecy, 


xlix.-lii.  13.]  DOUBTS  IN   THE    WAY.  383 

Stooping,  as  it  were,  to  kiss  the  trembling  lips  through 
which  these  doubts  break,  immediately  resumes  its  high 
flight  of  comfort  and  promise.  Two  of  these  doubts  are  : 
ver.  14,  But  Zton  hath  said,  Jehovah  hath  forsaken  me,  and 
my  Lord  hath  forgotten  me;  and  ver.  24,  Shall  the  prey 
be  taken  from  the  mighty  or  the  captives  of  the  terrible  be 
delivered?     The  third  is  implied  in  ch.  1.  I. 

The  promise  of  return  is  as  follows  :  On  roads  shall 
they  feed,  and  on  all  bare  heights  shall  be  their  pasture. 
They  shall  not  hunger  nor  thirst,  nor  shall  the  mirage  nor 
the  sun  smite  them  :  for  He  that  yearneth  over  them  shall 
lead  them,  even  by  springs  of  water  shall  He  guide  them. 
And  I  will  set  all  My  mountains  for  a  way,  and  My  high 
ways  shall  be  exalted.  Lo,  these  shall  come  from  far :  andy 
lo,  these  from  the  North  and  from  the  West,  and  these  from 
the  land  of  Sinim.*  Sing  forth,  O  heavens;  and  be  glad, 
O  earth;  let  the  mountains  break  forth  into  singing :  for 
Jehovah  hath  comforted  His  people,  and  over  His  afflicted 
He  yearneth. 

Now,  do  not  let  us  imagine  that  this  is  the  promise  of 
a  merely  material  miracle.  It  is  the  greater  glory  of  a 
purely  spiritual  one,  as  the  prophet  indicates  in  describ- 
ing its  cause  in  the  words,  because  He  that  yearneth  over 
them  shall  lead  them.     The  desert  is  not  to  abate  its 

*  The  question  whether  this  is  the  land  of  China  is  still  an  open 
one.  The  possibility  of  intercourse  between  China  and  Babylon  is 
more  than  proved.  But  that  there  were  Jews  in  China  by  this  time 
(though  they  seem  to  have  found  their  way  there  by  the  beginning 
of  the  Christian  era)  is  extremely  unlikely.  Moreover,  the  possibility 
of  such  a  name  as  Sinim  for  the  inhabitants  of  China  at  that  date  has 
not  been  proved.  No  other  claimants  for  the  name,  however,  have 
made  good  their  case.  But  we  need  not  enter  further  into  the  ques- 
tion. The  whole  matter  is  fully  discussed  in  Canon  Cheyne's  excursus, 
and  by  him  and  Terrien  de  Lacouperie  in  the  Babylonian  and  Oriental 
Record  for  1886-87.     See  especially  the  number  for  September  1887. 


384  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

immemorial  rigours  ;  in  itself  the  way  shall  still  be  as 
hard  as  when  the  discredited  and  heart-broken  exiles 
were  driven  down  it  from  home  to  servitude.  But  their 
hearts  are  now  changed,  and  that  shall  change  the  road. 
The  new  faith,  which  has  made  the  difference,  is  a  very 
simple  one,  that  God  is  Power  and  that  God  is  Love, 
Notice  the  possessive  pronouns  used  by  God,  and  mark 
what  they  put  into  His  possession  :  two  kinds  of  things, 
— powerful  things,  I  will  make  all  My  mountains  a  way  ; 
and  sorrowful  things,  Jehovah  hath  comforted  His  people, 
and  will  have  compassion  on  His  afflicted*  If  we  will 
steadfastly  believe  that  everything  in  the  world  which  is 
in  pain,  and  everything  which  has  power,  is  God's,  and 
shall  be  used  by  Him,  the  one  for  the  sake  of  the  other, 
this  shall  surely  change  the  way  to  our  feet,  and  all  the 
world  around  to  our  eyes. 

I.  Only  it  is  so  impossible  to  believe  it  when  one  looks 
at  real  fact ;  and  however  far  and  swiftly  faith  and  hope 
may  carry  us  for  a  time,  we  alwa3^s  come  to  ground  again 
and  face  to  face  with  fact.  The  prophet's  imagination 
speeding  along  that  green  and  lifted  highway  of  the 
Lord  lights  suddenly  upon  the  end  of  it, — the  still  dis- 
mantled and  desolate  city.  Fifty  years  Zion's  altar 
fires  have  been  cold  and  her  walls  in  ruin.  Fifty  years 
she  has  been  bereaved  of  her  children  and  left  alone. 
The  prophet  hears  the  winds  blow  mournfully  through 
her  fact's  chill  answer  to  faith.  But  Zion  said,  Forsaken 
me  hath  Jehovah,  and  my  Lord  hath  forgotten  me  I  Now 
let  us  remember,  that  our  prophet  has  Zion  before  him 
in  the  figure  of  a  mother,  and  we  shall  feel  the  force  of 
God's  reply.     It  is  to  a  mother's  heart  God  appeals. 


*  His  humbled,  His  poor  in  the  exilic  sense  of  the  word.      See 
Isaiah  i,-xxxix,,  pp.  432  ft. 


xlix.-Iii.  12.]  DOUBTS  IN   THE    WAY.  385 

Doth  a  woman  forget  her  sucking  child  so  as  not  to  yearn 
over  the  son  of  her  womb  ?  yea,  such  may  forget,  but  I 
will  not  forget  thee,  desolate  mother  that  thou  art  !  * 
Thy  life  is  not  what  thou  art  in  outward  show  and 
feeling,  but  what  thou  art  in  My  love  and  in  My  sight. 
Lo,  upon  both  palms  have  I  graven  thee;  thy  walls  are 
before  Me  continually.  The  custom,  which  to  some 
extent  prevails  in  all  nations,  of  puncturing  or  tattooing 
upon  the  skin  a  dear  name  one  wishes  to  keep  in  mind, 
is  followed  in  the  East  chiefly  for  religious  purposes, 
and  men  engrave  the  name  of  God  or  some  holy  text 
upon  the  hand  or  arm  for  a  memorial  or  as  a  mark  of 
consecration.  It  is  this  fashion  which  God  attributes  to 
Himself.  Having  measured  His  love  by  the  love  of  a 
mother.  He  gives  this  second  human  pledge  for  His 
memory  and  devotion.  But  again  He  exceeds  the 
human  habit ;  for  it  is  not  only  the  name  of  Zion  which 
is  engraved  on  His  hands,  but  her  picture.  And  it  is 
not  her  picture,  as  she  lies  in  her  present  ruin  and 
soHtariness,  but  her  restored  and  perfect  state  :  thy  walls 
are  continually  before  Me.  For  this  is  faith's  answer  to 
all  the  ruin  and  haggard  contradiction  of  outward  fact. 
Reality  is  not  what  we  see :  reality  is  what  God  sees. 
What  a  thing  is  in  His  sight  and  to  His  purpose,  that  it 
really  is,  and  that  it  shall  ultimately  appear  to  men's 
eyes.  To  make  us  believe  this  is  the  greatest  service 
the  Divine  can  do  for  the  human.  It  was  the  service 
Christ  was  always  doing,  and  nothing  showed  His 
divinity  more.  He  took  us  men  and  He  called  us, 
unworthy  as  we  were,  His  brethren,  the  sons  of  God. 
He  took  such  an  one  as  Simon,  shifting  and  unstable, 
a  quicksand  of  a  man,  and   He  said,  On  this  rock  I 

*  On  the  "Motherhood  of  God  "  ct.  Isaiah  i,-xxxix.,  p.  245  fF. 
VOL.  II.  25 


386  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH, 

will  build  My  Church.  A  man's  reality  is  not  what  he 
is  in  his  own  feelings,  or  what  he  is  to  the  world's 
eyes;  but  what  he  is  to  God's  love,  to  God's  yearn- 
ing, and  in  God's  plan.  If  he  believe  that,  so  in  the 
end  shall  he  feel  it,  so  in  the  end  shall  he  show  it 
to  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

Upon  those  great  thoughts,  that  God's  are  all  strong 
things  and  all  weak  things,  and  that  the  real  and  the 
certain  in  life  is  His  will,  the  prophecy  breaks  into  a 
vision  of  multitudes  in  motion.  There  is  a  great  stirring 
and  hastening,  crowds  gather  up  through  the  verses,  the 
land  is  lifted  and  thronged.  Lift  up  thine  eyes  round 
about,  and  behold:  all  of  them  gather  together,  they  come 
unto  thee.  As  I  live,  saith  Jehovah,  thou  shall  surely 
clothe  thyself  with  them  all  as  with  an  ornament^  and 
gird  thyself  with  them,  like  a  bride.  For  as  for  thy  waste 
places  and  thy  desolate  ones  and  thy  devastated  land— yea, 
thou  wilt  now  be  too  strait  for  the  inhabitants,  and  far  off 
shall  be  they  that  devoured  thee.  Again  shall  they  speak  in 
thine  ears, — the  children  of  thy  bereavement  (that  is,  those 
children  who  have  been  born  away  from  Zion  during 
her  solitude),  Too  strait  for  me  is  the  place,  make  me 
room  that  I  may  dwell.  And  thou  shall  say  in  thine  heart, 
Who  hath  borne  me  these, — not  begotten,  as  our  English 
version  renders,  because  the  question  with  Zion  was  not 
who  was  the  father  of  the  children,  but  who,  in  her  own 
barrenness,  could  possibly  be  the  mother, —  Who  hath 
borne  me  these,  seeing  I  was  first  bereft  of  my  children,  and 
since  then  have  been  barren,  an  exile  and  a  castaway  ! 
And  these,  who  hath  brought  them  up  !  Lo,  I  was  left  by 
myself.  These, — whence  are  they  !  Our  English  version, 
which  has  blundered  in  the  preceding  verses,  requires 
no  correction  in  the  following;  and  the  first  great 
Doubt  in  the  Way  being  now  answered,  for  they  that 


xlix.-lii.  12.]  DOUBTS  IN   THE   WAY.  387 

ivait  on  the  Lord  shall  not  be  asharnedy  we  pass  to  the 
second,  in  ver.  24. 

2.  Can  the  prey  be  taken  from  the  mighty,  or  the  captives 
of  the  tyrant*  be  delivered?  Even  though  God  be  full  of 
love  and  thought  for  Zion,  will  these  tyrants  give  up 
her  children  ?  Yea,  thus  saith  Jehovah,  Even  the  captives 
of  the  mighty  shall  be  taken,  and  the  prey  of  the  tyrant  be 
delivered;  and  with  him  that  quarreleth  with  thee  will  1 
quarrel,  and  thy  children  will  I  save.  And  I  will  make 
thine  oppressors  to  eat  their  own  flesh,  and  as  with  new 
wine  with  their  blood  shall  they  be  drunken,  that  all  flesh 
may  know  that  I  am  Jehovah  thy  Saviour,  and  thy  Re- 
deemer the  Mighty  One  of  Jacob. 

3.  But  novv^  a  third  Doubt  in  the  Way  seems  to  have 
risen.  Unlike  the  two  others,  it  is  not  directly  stated, 
but  we  may  gather  its  substance  from  the  reply  which 
Jehovah  makes  to  it  (1.  i).  Thus  saith  Jehovah,  What 
is  this  bill  of  divorce  of  your  mother  whom  I  have 
sent  away,  or  which  of  My  creditors  is  it  to  whom  I 
have  sold  you  ?  The  form,  in  which  this  challenge  is 
put,  assumes  that  the  Israelites  themselves  had  been 
thinking  of  Jehovah's  dismissal  of  Israel  as  an  irrevoc- 
able divorce  and  a  bankrupt  sale  into  slavery. f 

^' What  now  is  this  letter  of  divorce, — this  that  you 
are  saying  I  have  given  your  mother  ?     You  say  that 

*  For  p''"lV,  the  righteous  or  Just,  which  is  in  the  text,  the  Syr.,Vu]g., 
Ewald,  and  others  read  f^'^U,  as  in  the  following  verse,  terrible  or 
terribly  strong.  Dillmann,  however  (5th  ed.,  1890,  p.  438),  retains  pH^* 
takes  the  terms  mighty  and  fust  as  used  of  God,  and  reads  the  question, 
not  as  a  question  of  despair  uttered  by  the  people,  but  as  a  triumphant 
challenge  of  the  prophet  or  of  God  Himself.  He  would  then  make 
the  next  verse  run  thus  :  Nay,  for  the  captives  of  the  mighty  may  be  taken, 
and  the  prey  of  the  delivered,  but  with  him  who  strives  with  thee  I  will 
strive. 

f  The  English  version,  Where  is  the  bill,  is  incorrect.     The  phrase 


388  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

I  have  sold  you  as  a  bankrupt  father  sells  his  children, 
— to  which  then  of  my  creditors  is  it  that  I  have  sold 
you  ?  " 

The  most  characteristic  effect  of  sin  is  that  it  is  always 
reminding  men  of  law.  Whether  the  moral  habit  of 
it  be  upon  them  or  they  are  entangled  in  its  material 
consequences,  sin  breeds  in  men  the  conscience  of 
inexorable,  irrevocable  law.  Its  effect  is  not  only 
practical,  but  intellectual.  Sin  not  only  robs  a  man  of 
the  freedom  of  his  own  will,  but  it  takes  from  him  the 
power  to  think  of  freedom  in  others,  and  it  does  not 
stop  till  it  paralyses  his  belief  in  the  freedom  of  God. 
He,  who  knows  himself  as  the  creature  of  unchangeable 
habits  or  as  the  victim  of  pitiless  laws,  cannot  help 
imputing  his  own  experience  to  what  is  beyond  him,  till 
all  life  seems  strictly  lawbound,  the  idea  of  a  free  agent 
anywhere  an  impossibility,  and  God  but  a  part  of  the 
necessity  which  rules  the  universe. 

Two  kinds  of  generations  of  men  have  most  tended  to 
be  necessitarian  in  their  philosophy, — the  generations 
which  have  given  themselves  over  to  do  evil,  and  the 
generations  whose  poHtical  experience  or  whose  science 
has  impressed  them  with  the  inevitable  physical  results 
of  sin.  If  belief  in  a  Divine  Redeemer,  able  to  deliver 
man's  nature  from  the  guilt  and  the  curse  of  sin,  is 
growing  weak  among  us  to-day,  this  is  largely  due  to 
the  fact  that  our  moral  and  our  physical  sciences  have 
been  proving  to  us  what  creatures  of  law  we  are,  and 
disclosing,  especially  in  the  study  of  disease  and 
insanity,   how  inevitably  suffering  follows  sin.      God 

is  the  same  as  in  Ixvi.  ver.  I,  What  is  this  house  that  ye  build  for  Me  ? 
what  is  this  place  for  My  rest?  It  implies  a  house  aheady  built;  and 
so  in  the  text  above  What  ts  this  bill  of  divorce  implies  one  already 
thought  of  by  the  minds  of  the  persons  addressed  by  the  question. 


xlix.-lii.  12.]  DOUBTS  IN  THE   WAY.  389 


Himself  has  been  so  much  revealed  to  us  as  law,  that 
as  a  generation  we  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  He  ever 
acts  in  any  fashion  that  resembles  the  reversal  of  a 
law,  or  ever  works  any  swift,  sudden  deed  of  salvation. 
Now  the  generation  of  the  Exile  was  a  generation,  to 
whom  God  had  revealed  Himself  as  law.  They  were  a 
generation  of  convicts.  They  had  owned  the  justice  of 
the  sentence  which  had  banished  and  enslaved  them ; 
they  had  experienced  how  inexorably  God's  processes 
of  judgement  sweep  down  the  ages  ;  for  fifty  years  they 
had  been  feeling  the  inevitable  consequences  of  sin. 
The  conscience  of  Law,  which  this  experience  was 
bound  to  create  in  them,  grew  ever  more  strong,  till 
at  last  it  absorbed  even  the  hope  of  redemption,  and  the 
God,  who  enforced  the  Law,  Himself  seemed  to  be  forced 
by  it.  To  express  this  sense  of  law  these  earnest 
Israelites — for  though  in  error  they  were  in  earnest — 
went  to  the  only  kind  of  law,  with  which  they  were 
familiar,  and  borrowed  from  it  two  of  its  forms,  which 
were  not  only  suggested  to  them  by  the  relations  in 
which  the  nation  and  the  nation's  sons  respectively  stood 
to  Jehovah,  as  wife  and  as  children,  but  admirably 
illustrated  the  ideas  they  wished  to  express.  There 
was,  first,  the  form  of  divorce,  so  expressive  of  the  ideas 
of  absoluteness,  deliberateness  and  finality ; — of  abso- 
luteness, for  throughout  the  East  power  of  divorce  rests 
entirely  with  the  husband;  of  deliberateness,  for  in 
order  to  prevent  hasty  divorce  the  Hebrew  law  insisted 
that  the  husband  must  make  a  bill  or  writing  of  divorce 
instead  of  only  speaking  dismissal ;  and  of  finality,  for 
such  a  writing,  in  contrast  to  the  spoken  dismissal,  set 
the  divorce  beyond  recall.  The  other  form,  which  the 
doubters  borrowed  from  their  law,  was  one,  which, 
while  it  also  illustrated  the  irrevocableness  of  the,  act 


390  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

emphasized  the  helplessness  of  the  agent, — the  act  of 
the  father,  who  put  his  children  away,  not  as  the  husband 
put  his  wife  in  his  anger,  but  in  his  necessity,  selling 
them  to  pay  his  debts  and  because  he  was  bankrupt. 

On  such  doubts  God  turns  with  their  own  language. 
'^  I  have  indeed  put  your  mother  away,  but  where  is  the 
hill  that  makes  her  divorce  final,  beyond  recall  ?  You 
indeed  were  sold,  but  was  it  because  I  was  bankrupt  ? 
To  which,  then,  of  My  c?  editors  (note  the  scorn  of  the 
plural)  was  it  that  I  sold  you  ?  Nay,  by  means  of  your 
iniquities  did  you  sell  yourselves,  and  by  means  oj  your 
transgressions  were  you  put  away.  But  I  stand  here 
ready  as  ever  to  save,  I  alone.  If  there  is  any  diffi- 
culty about  your  restoration  it  lies  in  this,  that  I  am 
alone,  with  no  response  or  assistance  from  men.  Why 
when  I  came  was  there  no  man  ?  when  I  called  was  there 
none  to  answer  ?  Is  My  hand  shortened  at  all  that  it  can- 
not redeem?  or  is  there  in  it  nopoiver to  deliver?  And  so 
we  come  back  to  the  truth,  which  this  prophecy  so  often 
presents  to  us,  that  behind  all  things  there  is  a  personal 
initiative  and  urgency  of  infinite  power,  which  moves 
freely  of  its  own  compassion  and  force,  which  is 
hindered  by  no  laws  from  its  own  ends,  and  needs  no 
man's  co-operation  to  effect  its  purposes.  The  rest  of  the 
Lord's  answer  to  His  people's  fear,  that  He  is  bound 
by  an  inexorable  law,  is  simply  an  appeal  to  His 
wealth  of  force.  This  omnipotence  of  God  is  our 
prophet's  constant  solution  for  the  problems  which 
arise,  and  he  expresses  it  here  in  his  favourite  figures 
of  physical  changes  and  convulsions  of  nature.  Lo,  with 
My  rebuke  I  dry  up  the  sea,  I  make  rivers  a  wilderness  : 
their  fish  stinketh,  because  there  is  no  water,  and  dieth  for 
thirst.  I  clothe  the  heavens  with  blackness,  and  sackcloth 
I  set  for  their  covering.     The  argument  seems  to  be  :  if 


xlix.-lii.  12.]  DOUBTS  IN  THE   WAY.  39t 

God  can  work  those  sudden  revolutions  in  the  physical 
world,  those  apparent  interruptions  of  law  in  that  sphere, 
surely  you  can  believe  Him  capable  of  creating  sudden 
revolutions  also  in  the  sphere  of  history,  and  reversing 
those  laws  and  processes,  which  you  feel  to  be  un- 
alterable. It  is  an  argument  from  the  physical  to  the 
moral  world,  in  our  prophet's  own  analogical  style,  and 
like  those  we  found  in  ch.  xl. 

II.  li.-lii.  12. 

Passing  over  the  passage  on  the  Servant,  ch.  1.  4-1 1, 
we  reach  a  second  series  of  exhortations  in  face  of 
Doubts  in  the  Way  of  the  Return.  The  first  of  this 
new  series  is  li.  1-3. 

Their  doubts  having  been  answered  with  regard  to 
God's  mindfulness  of  them  and  His  power  to  save  them, 
the  loyal  Israelites  fall  back  to  doubt  themselves.  They 
see  with  dismay  how  few  are  ready  to  achieve  the 
freedom  that  God  has  assured,  and  upon  how  small  and 
insignificant  a  group  of  individuals  the  future  of  the 
nation  depends.  But  their  disappointment  is  not  made 
by  them  an  excuse  to  desert  the  purpose  of  Jehovah  : 
their  fewness  makes  them  the  more  faithful,  and  the 
defection  of  their  countrymen  drives  them  the  closer  to 
their  God.  Therefore,  God  speaks  to  them  kindly,  and 
answers  their  last  sad  doubt.  Hearken  unto  Me,  ye  that 
follow  righteousness,  that  seek  Jehovah.  Righteousness 
here  might  be  taken  in  its  inward  sense  of  conformity  to 
law,  personal  rightness  of  character ;  and  so  taken  it 
would  well  fall  in  with  the  rest  of  the  passage.  Those 
addressed  would  then  be  such  in  Israel,  as  in  face  of 
hopeless  prospects  applied  themselves  to  virtue  and 
religion.  But  righteousness  here  is  more  probably  used 
in  the  outward  sense,  which  we  have  found  prevalent 


392  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

in  "Second  Isaiah,"  of  vindication  and  victory;  the 
"  coming  right "  of  God's  people  and  God's  cause  in  the 
world,  their  justification  and  triumph  in  history.*  They 
who  are  addressed  will  then  be  they  who,  in  spite  of 
their  fewness,  believe  in  this  triumph,  follow  it,  make 
it  their  goal  and  their  aim,  and  seek  Jehovah,  know- 
ing that  He  can  bring  it  to  pass.  And  because,  in 
spite  of  their  doubts,  they  are  still  earnest,  and  though 
faint  are  yet  pursuing,  God  speaks  to  comfort  them 
about  their  fewness.  Their  present  state  may  be  very 
small  and  unpromising,  but  let  them  look  back  upon 
the  much  more  unpromising  character  of  their  origin  : 
look  unto  the  rock  whence  ye  were  hewn,  and  the  hole  of 
the  pit  whence  ye  were  digged.  To-day  you  may  be 
a  mere  handful,  ridiculous  in  the  hght  of  the  destiny 
you  are  called  to  achieve,  but  remember  you  were  once 
but  one  man  :  look  unto  Abraham  your  father,  and  to 
Sarah  who  bare  you :  for  as  one  I  called  him  and  blessed 
him,  that  I  might  make  of  him  many. 

When  we  are  weary  and  hopeless  it  is  best  to  sit 
down  and  remember.  Is  the  future  dark  :  let  us  look 
back  and  see  the  gathering  and  impetus  of  the  past  ! 
We  can  follow  the  luminous  track,  the  unmistakable 
increase  and  progress,  but  the  most  inspiring  sight  of 
all  is  what  God  makes  of  the  individual  heart;  how  a 
man's  heart  is  always  His  beginning,  the  fountain  of  the 
future,  the  origin  of  nations.     Lift  up  your  hearts,  ye 

*  Cf.  p.  221.  Dillmann's  view  that  righteousness  means  here  per- 
sonal character  is  contradicted  by  the  whole  context,  which  makes  it 
plain  that  it  is  something  external,  the  realisation  of  which  those 
addressed  are  doubting.  What  troubles  them  is  not  that  they  are  per- 
sonally unrighteous,  but  that  they  are  so  few  and  insignificant.  And 
what  God  promises  them  in  answer  is  something  external,  the  esta- 
blishment of  Zion.  Cf.  also  the  external  meaning  of  righteousness 
in  vv.  5,  6. 


xlix.-lii.  12.]  DOUBTS  IN   THE   WAY.  393 

few  and  feeble  ;  your  father  was  but  one  when  I  called 
him,  and  I  made  him  many  ! 

Having  thus  assured  His  loyal  remnant  of  the 
restoration  of  Zion,  in  spite  of  their  fewness,  Jehovah  in 
the  next  few  verses  (4-8)  extends  the  prospect  of  His 
glory  to  the  world  :  Revelation  shall  go  forth  from  Me, 
and  I  will  make  My  Law  to  light  on  the  nations.  Reve- 
lation and  Law  between  them  summarise  His  will.  As 
He  identified  them  both  with  the  Servant's  work  (ch.  xl. 
11),  so  here  He  tells  the  loyal  in  Israel,  who  were  in 
one  aspect  His  Servant,  that  they  shall  surely  come  to 
pass ;  and  in  the  next  little  oracle,  vv.  7,  8,  He  exhorts 
them  to  do  that  in  which  the  Servant  has  been  set 
forth  as  an  example  :  fear  ye  not  the  reproach  of  men, 
neither  be  dismayed  at  their  revilings.  For  like  a  gar- 
ment the  moth  shall  eat  them  up,  and  like  wool  shall  the 
worm  devour  them.  It  is  a  response  in  almost  the 
same  words  to  the  Servant's  profession  of  confidence  in 
God  in  ch.  1.  7-9.  By  some  it  is  used  as  an  argument 
to  show  that  the  Servant  and  the  godly  remnant  are  to 
our  prophet  still  virtually  one  and  the  same;  but  we 
have  already  seen  (ch.  1.  10)  the  godfearing  addressed 
as  distinct  from  the  Servant,  and  can  only  understand 
here  that  they  are  once  more  exhorted  to  take  him  as 
their  example.  But  if  the  likeness  of  the  passage  on  the 
Servant  to  this  passage  on  the  suffering  Remnant  does 
not  prove  that  Remnant  and  Servant  are  the  same,  it  is 
certainly  an  indication  that  both  passages,  so  far  from 
being  pieced  together  out  of  different  poems,  are  most 
probably  due  to  the  same  author  and  were  produced 
originally  in  the  same  current  of  thought. 

When  all  Doubts  in  the  Way  have  now  been  re- 
moved, what  can  remain  but  a  great  impatience  to 
achieve  at  once  the  near  salvation  ?     To  this  impatience 


394  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH, 

the  loosened  hearts  give  voice  in  vv.  9-1 1  :  Awake, 
awake,  put  on  strength,  Arm  of  Jehovah ;  awake  as  in  the 
days  of  old,  ages  far  past!  Not  in  vain  have  Israel 
been  called  to  look  back  to  the  rock  whence  they  were 
hewn  and  the  hole  of  the  pit  whence  they  were  digged. 
Looking  back,  they  see  the  ancient  deliverance  manifest: 
Art  thou  not  it  that  hewed  Rahab  in  pieces,  that  pierced 
the  Dragon  !  Art  thou  not  it  that  dried  up  the  sea,  waters 
of  the  great  flood;  that  did  set  the  hollows  of  the  sea  a  way 
for  the  passage  of  the  redeemed.  Then  there  breaks 
forth  the  March  of  the  Return,  which  we  heard  already 
in  the  end  of  ch.  xxxv.,*  and  to  His  people's  impatience 
Jehovah  responds  in  vv.  9-16  in  strains  similar  to 
those  of  ch.  xl.  The  last  verse  of  this  reply  is  notable 
for  the  enormous  extension  which  it  gives  to  the  pur- 
pose of  Jehovah  in  endowing  Israel  as  His  prophet, 
— an  extension  to  no  less  than  the  renewal  of  the 
universe, — in  order  to  plant  the  heavens  and  found  the 
earth;  though  the  reply  emphatically  concludes  with 
the  restoration  of  Israel,  as  if  this  were  the  cardinal 
moment  in  the  universal  regeneration, — and  to  say  to 
Zion,  My  people  art  thou.  The  close  conjunction,  into 
which  this  verse  brings  words  already  applied  to  Israel 
as  the  Servant  and  words  which  describe  Israel  as 
Zion,  is  another  of  the  many  proofs  we  are  discovering 
of  the  impossibility  of  breaking  up  "  Second  Isaiah  "  into 
poems,  the  respective  subjects  of  which  are  one  or 
other  of  these  two  personifications  of  the  nation,  f 

But  the  desire  of  the  prophet  speeds  on  before  the 
returning  exiles  to  the  still  prostrate  and  desolate  city. 
He  sees  her  as  she  fell,  the  day  the  Lord  made  her 
drunken  with    the   cup   of  His  wrath.     With   urgent 

*  Isaiah,  i.-xxxix.,  p.  441.  t  O^*  P-  3^5- 


xlix.-lii.  12.]  DOUBTS  IN  THE   WAY.  39S 

passion  he  bids  her  awake,  seeking  to  rouse  her  now 
by  the  horrid  tale  of  her  ruin,  and  now  by  his  exulta- 
tion in  the  vengeance  the  Lord  is  preparing  for  His 
enemies  (li.  17-23).  In  a  second  strophe  he  addresses 
her  in  conscious  contrast  to  his  taunt-song  against  Babel. 
Babel  was  to  sit  throneless  and  stripped  of  her  splen- 
dour in  the  dust ;  but  Zion  is  to  shake  off  the 
dust,  rise,  sit  on  her  throne  and  assume  her  majesty. 
For  God  hath  redeemed  His  people.  He  could  not 
tolerate  longer  the  exulting  of  their  tyrants,  the  blasphemy 
of  His  name  (Hi.  1-6).  All  through  these  two  strophes 
the  strength  of  the  passion,  the  intolerance  of  further 
captivity,  the  fierceness  of  the  exultation  of  vengeance, 
are  very  remarkable. 

But  from  the  ruin  of  his  city,  which  has  so  stirred 
and  made  turbulent  his  passion,  the  prophet  lifts  his  hot 
eyes  to  the  dear  hills  that  encircle  her ;  and  peace  takes 
the  music  from  vengeance.  Often  has  Jerusalem  seen 
rising  across  that  high  margin  the  spears  and  banners 
of  her  destroyers.  But  now  the  lofty  skyline  is  the 
lighting  place  of  hope.  Fit  threshold  for  so  Divine  an 
arrival,  it  lifts  against  heaven,  dilated  and  beautiful, 
the  herald  of  the  Lord's  peace,  the  publisher  of 
salvation. 

How  beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the  feet  of  him 
that  bringeth  good  tidings,  that  publisheth  peace,  that 
bringeth  good  tidings  of  good,  that  publisheth  salvation  ! 
Hark  thy  watchmen  !  they  lift  up  the  voice,  together  they 
break  into  singing;  yea,  eye  to  eye  do  they  see  when 
Jehovah  returneth  to  Zion. 

The  last  verse  is  a  picture  of  the  thronging  of  the 
city  of  the  prophets  by  the  prophets  again — so  close, 
that  they  shall  look  each  other  in  the  face.  For  this  is 
the  sense  of  the  Hebrew  to  see  eye  in  eye^  and  not  that 


396  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

meaning  of  reconciliation  and  agreement  which  the 
phrase  has  come  to  have  in  colloquial  English.  The 
Exile  had  scattered  the  prophets  and  driven  them  into 
hiding.  They  had  been  only  voices  to  one  another, 
hke  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  with  the  desert  between  the 
two  of  them,  or  like  our  own  prophet,  anonymous 
and  unseen.  But  upon  the  old  gathering-ground,  the 
narrow  but  the  free  and  open  platform  of  Jerusalem's 
public  life,  they  should  see  each  other  face  to  face,  they 
should  again  be  named  and  known.  Break  out^  sing 
together,  ye  wastes  of  Jerusalem :  for  Jehovah  has  com- 
forted His  people,  has  redeemed  Jerusalem,  Bared  has 
Jehovah  His  holy  arm  to  the  eyes  of  all  the  nations,  and 
see  shall  all  ends  of  the  earth  the  salvation  of  our  God. 

Thus  the  prophet,  after  finishing  his  long  argument 
and  dispelling  the  doubts  that  still  lingered  at  its  close, 
returns  to  the  first  high  notes  and  the  first  dear  subject 
with  which  he  opened  in  ch.  xl.  In  face  of  so  open  a 
way,  so  unclouded  a  prospect,  nothing  remains  but  to 
repeat,  and  this  time  with  greater  strength  than  before, 
the  call  to  leave  Babylon  : 

Draw  off,  draw  off,  come  forth  from  there,  touch  not  tne 

unclean  ; 
Come  forth  from  her  midst;  be  ye  clean  that  do  bear  the 

vessels  of  Jehovah. 
Nay,  neither  with  haste  shall  ye  forth,  nor  iu  flight  shall 

ye  go. 
For  Jehovah  goeth  before  thee,  and  Israefi   6/t»  is  thy 

rearward. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

ON    THE   EVE    OF  RETURN. 
Isaiah  liv.-lvi.  8. 

ONE  of  the  difficult  problems  of  our  prophecy 
is  the  relation  and  grouping  of  chs.  liv.-lix- 
It  is  among  them  that  the  unity  of  "  Second  Isaiah," 
which  up  to  this  point  we  have  seen  no  reason  to  doubt, 
gives  way.  Ch.  Ivi.  9-lvii.  is  evidently  pre-exilic,  and 
so  is  ch.  lix.  But  in  chs.  liv.,  Iv.,  and  Ivi.  1-8  we  have 
three  addresses,  evidently  dating  from  the  Eve  of  the 
Return.     We  shall,  therefore,  treat  them  together. 

I.  The  Bride  the  City  (ch.  liv.). 

We  have  already  seen  why  there  is  no  reason  for 
the  theory  that  ch.  liv.  may  have  followed  immediately 
on  ch.  lii.  12.*  And  from  Calvin  to  Ewald  and 
Dillmann,  critics  have  all  felt  a  close  connection 
between  ch.  lii.  13-liii.  and  ch.  liv.  "After  having 
spoken  of  the  death  of  Christ,"  says  Calvin,  "  the 
prophet  passes  on  with  good  reason  to  the  Church  : 
that  we  may  feel  more  deeply  in  ourselves  what  is  the 
value  and  efficacy  of  His  death."  Similar  in  substance, 
if  not  in  language,  is  the  opinion  of  the  latest  critics, 
who  understand  that  in  ch.  liv.  the  prophet  intends  to 

*  C/pp.336ff. 


39^  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

picture  that  full  redemption  which  the  Servant's  work, 
culminating  in  ch.  liii.,  could  alone  effect.  Two  key- 
words of  ch.  liii.  had  been  a  seed  and  many.  It  is  the 
seed  and  the  many  whom  ch.  liv.  reveals.  Again,  there 
may  be,  in  ver.  17  of  ch.  liv.,  a  reference  to  the  earlier 
picture  of  the  Servant  in  ch.  1.,  especially  ver.  8.  But 
this  last  is  uncertain ;  and,  as  a  point  on  the  other  side, 
there  are  the  two  different  meanings,  as  well  as  the  two 
different  agents,  of  righteousness  in  ch.  liii.  11,  My 
Servant  shall  make  many  righteous^  and  in  ch.  liv.  17, 
their  righteousness  which  is  of  Me,  saith  Jehovah.  In 
the  former,  righteousness  is  the  inward  justification; 
in  the  latter,  it  is  the  external  historical  vindication. 

In  ch.  liv.  the  people  of  God  are  represented  under 
the  double  figure,  with  which  the  Book  of  Revelation 
has  made  us  familiar,  of  Bride  and  City.  To  imagine 
a  Nation  or  a  Land  as  the  spouse  of  her  God  is  a  habit 
natural  to  the  religious  instinct  at  all  times  ;  the  land 
deriving  her  fruitfulness,  the  nation  her  standing  and 
prestige,  from  her  connection  with  the  Deity.  But  in 
ancient  times  this  figure  of  wedlock  was  more  natural 
than  it  is  among  us,  in  so  far  as  the  human  man  and 
wife  did  not  then  occupy  that  relation  of  equality,  to 
which  it  has  been  the  progress  of  civilisation  to  ap- 
proximate ;  but  the  husband  was  the  lord  of  his  wife, — 
as  much  her  Baal  as  the  god  was  the  Baal  of  the  people, 
— her  law-giver,  in  part  her  owner,  and  with  full 
authority  over  the  origin  and  subsistence  of  the  bond 
between  them.  Marriage  thus  conceived  was  a  figure 
for  religion  almost  universal  among  the  Semites.  But 
as  in  the  case  of  so  many  other  religious  ideas  common 
to  the  Hebrews  and  their  heathen  kin,  this  one,  when 
adopted  by  the  prophets  of  Jehovah,  underwent  a 
thorough  moral  reformation.     Indeed,  if  one  were  asked 


liv.-lvi.  8.]  ON   THE  EVE   OF  RETURN.  399 

to  point  out  a  supreme  instance  of  the  operation  of  that 
unique  conscience  of  the  religion  of  Jehovah,  which  was 
spoken  of  before,*  one  would  have  little  difficulty  in 
selecting  its  treatment  of  the  idea  of  religious  marriage. 
By  the  neighbours  of  Israel,  the  marriage  of  a  god  to 
his  people  was  conceived  with  a  grossness  of  feeling 
and  illustrated  by  a  foulness  of  ritual,  which  thoroughly 
demoralised  the  people,  affording,  as  they  did,  to  licen- 
tiousness the  example  and  sanction  of  religion.  So  de- 
based had  the  idea  become,  and  so  full  of  temptation  to 
the  Hebrews  were  the  forms  in  which  it  was  illustrated 
among  their  neighbours,  that  the  religion  of  Israel  might 
justly  have  been  praised  for  achieving  a  great  moral 
victory  in  excluding  the  figure  altogether  from  its 
system.  But  the  prophets  of  Jehovah  dared  the 
heavier  task  of  retaining  the  idea  of  religious  mar- 
riage, and  won  the  diviner  triumph  of  purifying  and 
elevating  it.  It  was,  indeed,  a  new  creation.  Every 
physical  suggestion  was  banished,  and  the  relation  was 
conceived  as  purely  moral.  Yet  it  was  never  refined 
to  a  mere  form  or  abstraction.  The  prophets  fearlessly 
expressed  it  in  the  warmest  and  most  famiHar  terms  of 
the  love  of  man  and  woman.  With  a  stern  and  abso- 
lute interpretation  before  them  in  the  Divine  law,  of  the 
relations  of  a  husband  to  his  wife,  they  borrowed  from 
that  only  so  far  as  to  do  justice  to  the  Almighty's 
initiative  and  authority  in  His  relation  with  mortals  ; 
and  they  laid  far  more  emphasis  on  the  instinctive  and 
spontaneous  affections,  by  which  Jehovah  and  Israel 
had  been  drawn  together.  Thus,  among  a  people 
naturally  averse  to  think  or  to  speak  of  God  as  loving  t 

*  See  pp.  247  fF. 

f  "Das  eigentliche  Wort  '  Liebe'  kommt  im  A.  T.  von  Gott  fast  gar 
nicht  vor, — und  wo  es,  bei  einem  spaten  Schriftsteller,  vorkommt,  ist 


400  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

men,  this  close  relation  to  Him  of  marriage  was  ex- 
pressed with  a  warmth,  a  tenderness  and  a  delicacy, 
that  exceeded  even  the  two  other  fond  forms  in  which 
the  Divine  grace  was  conveyed, — of  a  father's  and  of  a 
mother's  love. 

In  this  new  creation  of  the  marriage  bond  between 
God  and  His  church,  three  prophets  had  a  large  share, 
— Hosea,  Ezekiel  and  the  author  of  '^  Second  Isaiah." 
To  Hosea  and  Ezekiel  it  fell  to  speak  chiefly  of  un- 
pleasant aspects  of  the  question, — the  unfaithfulness  of 
the  wife  and  her  divorce  ;  but  even  then,  the  moral 
strength  and  purity  of  the  Hebrew  religion,  its  Divine 
vehemence  and  glow,  were  only  the  more  evident  for 
the  unpromising  character  of  the  materials  with  which 
it  dealt.  To  our  prophet,  on  the  contrary,  it  fell  to 
speak  of  the  winning  back  of  the  wife,  and  he  has 
done  so  with  wonderful  delicacy  and  tenderness.  Our 
prophet,  it  is  true,  has  not  one,  but  two,  deep  feelings 
about  the  love  of  God  :  it  passes  through  him  as  the 
love  of  a  mother,  as  well  as  the  love  of  a  husband. 
But  while  he  lets  us  see  the  former  only  twice  or  thrice, 
the  latter  may  be  felt  as  the  almost  continual  under- 
current of  his  prophecy,  and  often  breaks  to  hearing, 
now  in  a  sudden,  single  ripple  of  a  phrase,  and  now  in  a 
long  tide  of  marriage  music.  His  lips  open  for  Jehovah 
on  the  language  of  wooing, — speak  ye  to  the  heart  of 
Jerusalem;  and  though  his  masculine  figure  for  Israel 
as  the  Servant  keeps  his  affection  hidden  for  a  time, 
this  emerges  again  when  the  subject  of  Service  is 
exhausted,    till    Israel,    where   she    is    not    Jehovah's 


es  Bezeichnung  seiner  besondren  Bundes-liebe  zu  Israel,  deren 
natiirliche  Kehrseite  der  Hass  gegen  die  feindlichen  Volker  ist." — 
Schultz,  A.  T.  Theologie,  4th  ed.,  p.  548. 


liv.-lvi.  8.]  ON  THE  EVE  OF  RETURN,  401 

Servant,  is  Jehovah's  Bride.  In  the  series  of  passages 
on  Zion,  from  ch.  xHx.  to  ch.  Hi.,  the  City  is  the  Mother 
of  His  children,  the  Wife  who  though  put  away  has 
never  been  divorced.  In  ch.  Ixii.  she  is  called  Hephzi- 
Bah,  My-delight-is-in-her,  and  Beulah,  or  Married,— for 
Jehovah  delighteth  in  thee,  and  thy  land  shall  be  married. 
For  as  a  youth  marrieth  a  maiden,  thy  sons  shall  marry 
thee ;  and  with  the  joy  of  a  bridegroom  over  a  bride,  thy 
God  shall  joy  over  thee.*  But  it  is  in  the  chapter  now 
before  us  that  the  relation  is  expressed  with  greatest 
tenderness  and  wealth  of  affection.  Be  not  afraid,  for 
thou  shalt  not  be  shamed ;  and  be  not  confounded,  for 
thou  shalt  not  be  put  to  the  blush :  for  the  shame  of  thy 
youth  thou  shalt  forget,  and  the  reproach  of  thy  widowhood 
thou  shalt  not  remember  again.  For  thy  Maker  is  thy 
Husband,  Jehovah  of  Hosts  is  His  name;  and  thy 
Redeemer  the  Holy  of  Israel,  God  of  the  whole  earth  is 
He  called.  For  as  a  wife  forsaken  and  grieved  in  spirit 
thou  art  called  of  Jehovah,  even  a  wife  of  youth,  when  she 
is  cast  off,  saith  thy  God.  For  a  small  moment  have  I 
forsaken  thee,  but  with  great  mercies  will  I  gather  thee. 
In  an  egre  of  anger  *  I  hid  My  face  a  moment  from  thee, 
but  with  grace  everlasting  will  I  have  mercy  upon  thee, 
saith  thy  Redeemer  Jehovah. 

In  this  eighth  verse  we  pass  from  the  figure  of  the 
Bride  to  that  of  the  City,  which  emerges  clear  through 
flood  and  storm  in  ver.  ii.  Afflicted,  Storm-beaten, 
Uncomforted,  Lo,  I  am  setting  in  dark  metal  {antimony, 
used  by  women  for  painting  round  the  eyes,  so  as  to 

*  The  reserve  of  this — the  limitation  of  the  relation  to  one  of 
feeling — is  remarkable  in  contrast  to  the  more  physical  use  of  the 
same  figure  in  other  religions. 

t  Egre,  or  sudden  rush  of  the  tide,  or  spate,  or  freshet.  The 
original  is  assonant:  B^shesseph  qesseph. 

VOL.  II.  26 


402  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAlAH. 

set  forth  their  brilHance  more)  thy  stones, — that  they 
may  shine  from  this  setting  Hke  women's  eyes, — and  I 
will  found  thee  in  sapphires :  as  heaven's  own  founda- 
tion vault  is  blue,  so  shall  the  ground-stones  be  of  the 
New  Jerusalem.  And  I  will  set  rubies  for  thy  pinnacles, 
and  thy  gates  shall  be  sparkling  stones,'^  and  all  thy  borders 
stones  of  delight, — stones  of  joy,  jewels.  The  rest  of  the 
chapter  paints  the  righteousness  of  Zion  as  l:er  external 
security  and  splendour. 


II.  A  Last  Call  to  the  Busy  (ch.  Iv). 

The  second  address  upon  the  Eve  of  Return  is 
ch.  Iv.  Its  pure  gospel  and  clear  music  render  detailed 
exposition,  except  on  a  single  point,  superfluous.  One 
can  but  stand  and  listen  to  those  great  calls  to  repent- 
ance and  obedience,  which  issue  from  it.  What  can 
be  added  to  them  or  said  about  them  ?  Let  one  take 
heed  rather  to  let  them  speak  to  one's  own  heart !  A 
little  exploration,  however,  will  be  of  advantage  among 
the  circumstances  from  which  they  shoot. 

The  commercial  character  of  the  opening  figures  of 
ch.  Iv.  arrests  the  attention.  We  saw  that  Babylon 
was  the  centre  of  the  world's  trade,  and  that  it  was  in 
Babylon  that  the  Jews  first  formed  those  mercantile 
habits,  which  have  become,  next  to  religion,  or  in 
place  of  religion,  their  national  character.  Born  to  be 
priests,  the  Jews  drew  down  their  splendid  powers  of 
attention,  pertinacity  and  imagination  from  God  upon 
the  world,  till  they  equally  appear  to  have  been  born 
traders.  They  laboured  and  prospered  exceedingly, 
gathering    property   and    settling   in    comfort.      They 

*  So  literally  ;  LXX.  crystals,  carbuncles  or  diamonds. 


liv.-lvi.  8.]  ON   THE  EVE   OF  RETURN.  403 

drank  of  the  streams  of  Babylon,  no  longer  made  bitter 
by  their  tears,  and  ceased  to  think  upon  Zion. 

But,  of  all  men,  exiles  can  least  forget  that  there  is 
that  which  money  can  never  buy.  Money  and  his 
work  can  do  much  for  the  banished  man, — feed  him, 
clothe  him,  even  make  for  him  a  kind  of  second  home, 
and  in  time,  by  the  payment  of  taxes,  a  kind  of  second 
citizenship  ;  but  they  can  never  bring  him  to  the  true 
climate  of  his  heart,  nor  win  for  him  his  real  life.  And 
of  all  exiles  the  Jew,  however  free  and  prosperous  in 
his  banishment  he  might  be,  was  least  able  to  find  his 
life  among  the  good  things — the  water,  the  wine  and 
the  milk — of  a  strange  country.  For  home  to  Israel 
meant  not  only  home,  but  duty,  righteousness  and 
God.*  God  had  created  the  heart  of  this  people  to 
hunger  for  His  word,  and  in  His  word  they  could 
alone  find  \hQ  fatness  of  their  soul.  Success  and  comfort 
shall  never  satisfy  the  soul  which  God  has  created  for 
obedience.  The  simplicity  of  the  obedience  that  is  here 
asked  from  Israel,  the  emphasis  that  is  laid  upon  mere 
obedience  as  ringing  in  full  satisfaction,  is  impressive  : 
hearken  diligentlyj  and  eat  that  which  is  good;  incline 
your  ear  and  come  unto  Me,  hear  and  your  soul  shall 
live.  It  suggests  the  number  of  plausible  reasons, 
which  may  be  offered  for  every  worldly  and  material 
life,  and  to  which  there  is  no  answer  save  the  call  of 
God's  own  voice  to  obedience  and  surrender.  To 
obedience  God  then  promises  influence.  In  place  of 
being  a  mere  trafficker  with  the  nations,  or,  at  best, 
their  purveyor  and  money-lender,  the  Jew,  if  he 
obeys  God,  shall  be  the  priest  and  prophet  of  the 
peoples.     This  is  illustrated  in  vv.  4^-6,  the  only  hard 

•  Cf.  Isaiah  i.-xxxix.,  pp.  440  fF. 


404  THE  BOOK  OF  IS  At  AH. 

passage  in  the  chapter.  God  will  make  His  people  like 
David  ;  whether  the  historical  David  or  the  ideal  David 
described  by  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  is  uncertain.*  God 
will  conclude  an  everlasting  covenant  with  them,  equiva- 
lent to  the  sure  favours  showered  on  him.  As  God  set 
him  for  a  witness  (that  is,  a  prophet)  to  the  peoples^  a 
prince  and  a  leader  to  the  peoples,  so  (in  phrases  that  recall 
some  used  by  David  of  himself  in  the  eighteenth  Psalm) 
shall  they  as  prophets  and  kings  influence  strange 
nations — calling  a  nation  thou  knowest  not,  and  nations 
that  have  not  known  thee  shall  run  unto  thee.  The  effect  of 
the  unconscious  influence,  which  obedience  to  God,  and 
surrender  to  Him  as  His  instrument,  are  sure  to  work, 
could  not  be  more  grandly  stated.  But  we  ought  not 
to  let  another  point  escape  our  attention,  for  it  has 
its  contribution  to  make  to  the  main  question   of  the 

*  The  structure  of  this  difficult  passage  is  this.  Ver.  3  states  the 
equation  :  the  everlasting  covenant  with  the  people  Israel  =  the  sure, 
unfailing  favours  bestowed  upon  the  individual  David.  Vv.  4  and  5 
unfold  the  contents  of  the  equation.  Each  side  of  it  is  introduced  by 
a  Lo.  Lo,  on  the  one  side,  what  I  have  done  to  David  ;  Lo,  on  the  other, 
what  I  will  do  to  j'ou.  As  David  was  a  witness  of  peoples,  a  prince  and 
commander  of  peoples,  so  shalt  thou  call  to  them  and  make  them  obey 
thee.  This  is  clear  enough.  But  who  is  David  ?  The  phrase  the 
favours  of  David  suggests  2  Chron.  vi.  42,  remember  the  mercies  of 
David  thy  servant ;  and  those  in  ver.  5  recall  Psalm  xviii.  43  f. :  Thou 
hast  made  me  the  head  of  nations  ;  A  people  I  know  not  shall  serve  tne ; 
As  soon  as  they  hear  of  me  they  shall  obey  me  ;  Strangers  shall  submit 
themselves  to  me.  Yet  both  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel  call  the  coming 
Messiah  David.  Jer.  xxx.  9  :  They  shall  serve  Jehovah  their  God  and 
David  their  King.  Ezek.  xxxiv.  23  :  And  I  will  set  up  a  shepherd  over 
them,  and  he  shall  feed  them,  and  he  shall  be  their  shepherd.  And  I 
Jehovah  ivill  be  their  God,  and  My  servant  David  prince  among  them. 
After  these  writers,  our  prophet  could  hardly  help  using  the  name 
David  in  its  Messianic  sense,  even  though  he  also  quoted  (in  ver.  5) 
a  few  phrases  recalling  the  historical  David.  But  the  question  does 
not  matter  much.  The  real  point  is  the  transference  of  the  favours 
bestowed  upon  an  individual  to  the  whole  people. 


liv.-lvi.  8.]  ON   THE  EVE   OF  RETURN.  405 

Servant.  As  explained  in  the  note  to  a  sentence  above, 
it  is  uncertain  whether  Z)«w'(^ is  the  historical  king  of  that 
name,  or  the  Messiah  still  to  come.  In  either  case,  he 
is  an  individual,  whose  functions  and  qualities  are  trans- 
ferred to  the  people,  and  that  is  the  point  demanding 
attention.  If  our  prophecy  can  thus  so  easily  speak  of 
God's  purpose  of  service  to  the  Gentiles  passing  from 
the  individual  to  the  nation,  why  should  it  not  also  be 
able  to  speak  of  the  opposite  process,  the  transference 
of  the  service  from  the  nation  to  the  single  Servant  ? 
When  the  nation  were  unworthy  and  unredeemed,  could 
not  the  prophet  as  easily  think  of  the  relegation  of  their 
office  to  an  individual,  as  he  now  promises  to  their 
obedience  that  that  office  shall  be  restored  to  them  ? 

The  next  verses  urgently  repeat  calls  to  repentance. 
And  then  comes  a  passage  which  is  grandly  meant  to 
make  us  feel  the  contrast  of  its  scenery  with  the  toil, 
the  money-getting  and  the  money-spending  from  which 
the  chapter  started.  From  all  that  sordid,  barren, 
human  strife  in  the  markets  of  Babylon,  we  are  led  out 
to  look  at  the  boundless  heavens,  and  are  told  that  as  they 
are  higher  than  the  earthy  so  are  God^s  ways  higher  than  our 
ways,  and  God's  reckonings  than  our  reckonings ;  we  are 
led  out  to  see  the  gentle  fall  of  rain  and  snow  that  so  easily 
maketh  the  eatih  to  bring  forth  and  bud,  and  give  seed  to  the 
sower  and  bread  to  the  eater,  and  are  told  that  it  is  a 
symbol  of  God's  word,  which  we  were  called  from  our 
vain  labours  to  obey;  we  are  led  out  to  the  mountains 
and  to  the  hills  breaking  before  you  into  singing,  and 
to  the  free,  wild  natural  trees  *  tossing  their  unlopped 

*  English  version,  trees  of  the  field,  but  the  field  is  the  country 
beyond  the  bounds  of  cultivation  ;  and  as  beasts  of  the  field  means 
wild  beasts,  so  this  means  wild  trees, — unforced,  unaided  by  man's 
labour. 


4o6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

branches ;  we  are  led  to  see  even  the  desert  change,  for 
instead  of  the  thorn  shall  come  up  the  fir-tree,  and  instead 
of  the  nettle  shall  come  up  the  myrtle;  and  it  shall  be  to 
Jehovah  for  a  name,  for  an  everlasting  sign  that  shall 
not  be  cut  off.  Thus  does  the  prophet,  in  his  own 
fashion,  lead  the  starved  worldly  heart,  that  has  sought 
in  vain  its  fulness  from  its  toil,  through  scenes  of 
Nature,  to  that  free  omnipotent  Grace,  of  which  Nature's 
processes  are  the  splendid  sacraments. 

III.  Proselytes  and  Eunuchs  (ch.  Ivi.   i-8). 

The  opening  verse  of  this  small  prophecy,  My  salva- 
tion is  near  to  come,  and  My  righteousness  to  be  revealed, 
attaches  it  very  closely  to  the  preceding  prophecy.  If 
ch.  Iv.  expounds  the  grace  and  faithfulness  of  God 
in  the  Return  of  His  people,  and  asks  from  them  only 
faith  as  the  price  of  such  benefits,  ch.  Ivi.  1-8  adds  the 
demand  that  those  who  are  to  return  shall  keep  the  law, 
and  extends  their  blessings  to  foreigners  and  others, 
who  though  technically  disqualified  from  the  privileges 
of  the  born  and  legitimate  Israelite,  had  attached  them- 
selves to  Jehovah  and  His  Law. 

Such  a  prophecy  was  very  necessary.  The  disper- 
sion of  Israel  had  already  begun  to  -accomplish  its 
missionary  purpose ;  pious  souls  in  many  lands  had 
felt  the  spiritual  power  of  this  disfigured  people,  and 
had  chosen  for  Jehovah's  sake  to  follow  its  uncertain 
fortunes.  It  was  indispensable  that  these  Gentile  con- 
verts should  be  comforted  against  the  withdraw^al  of 
Israel  from  Babylon,  for  they  said,  Jehovah  will  surely 
separate  me  from  His  people,  as  well  as  against  the  time 
when  it  might  become  necessary  to  purge  the  restored 
community  from  heathen  constituents.*     Again,  all  the 

Neh.  xiii. 


liv.-lvi.  8.]  ON   THE  EVE   OF  RETURN.  407 

male  Jews  could  hardly  have  escaped  the  disqualifica- 
tion, which  the  cruel  custom  of  the  East  inflicted  on 
some,  at  least,  of  every  body  of  captives.  It  is  almost 
certain  that  Daniel  and  his  companions  were  eunuchs, 
and  if  they,  then  perhaps  many  more.  But  the  Book  of 
Deuteronomy  had  declared  mutilation  of  this  kind  to  be 
a  bar  against  entrance  to  the  assembly  of  the  Lord.  It 
is  not  one  of  the  least  interesting  of  the  spiritual  results 
of  the  Exile,  that  its  necessities  compelled  the  abrogation 
of  the  letter  of  such  a  law.  With  a  freedom  that  fore- 
shadows Christ's  own  expansion  of  the  ancient  strict- 
ness, and  in  words  that  would  not  be  out  of  place  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  this  prophecy  ensures  to  pious 
men,  whom  cruelty  had  deprived  of  the  two  things 
dearest  to  the  heart  of  an  Israelite, — a  present  place, 
and  a  perpetuation  through  his  posterity,  in  the  com- 
munity of  God, — that  in  the  new  temple  a  monument* 
and  a  name  should  be  given,  better  and  more  enduring 
than  sons  or  daughters.  This  prophecy  is  further  note- 
worthy as  the  first  instance  of  the  strong  emphasis 
which  ''  Second  Isaiah  "  lays  upon  the  keeping  of  the 
Sabbath,  and  as  first  calling  the  temple  the  House  of 
Prayer.  Both  of  these  characteristics  are  due,  of 
course,  to  the  Exile,  the  necessities  of  which  prevented 
almost  every  religious  act  save  that  of  keeping  fasts 
and  Sabbaths  and  serving  God  in  prayer.  On  our 
prophet's  teaching  about  the  Sabbath  there  will  be 
more  to  say  in  the  next  chapter. 

*  The  original  is  a  hand ;  a  term  applied  (perhaps  because  it  con- 
sisted of  tapering  stones)  to  an  index,  or  monument  of  victory,  I  Sam. 
XV.  12;  or  to  a  sepulchral  monument,  2  Sam.  xviii.  18. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

FHE   REKINDLING    OF  THE    CIVIC  CONSCIENCE. 
Isaiah  Ivi.  9-lix. 

IT  was  inevitable,  as  soon  as  their  city  was  again 
fairly  in  sight,  that  there  should  re-awaken  in  the 
exiles  the  civic  conscience ;  that  recollections  ot  those 
besetting  sins  of  their  public  life,  for  which  their  city 
and  their  independence  were  destroyed,  should  throng 
back  upon  them  ;  that  in  prospect  of  their  again  be- 
coming responsible  for  the  discharge  of  justice  and 
other  political  duties,  they  should  be  reminded  by  the 
prophet  of  their  national  faults  in  these  respects,  and  of 
God's  eternal  laws  concerning  them.  If  we  keep  this 
in  mind,  we  shall  understand  the  presence  in  "  Second 
Isaiah"  of  the  group  of  prophecies  at  which  we  have 
now  arrived,  ch.  Ivi.  9-lix.  Hitherto  our  prophet,  in 
marked  contrast  to  Isaiah  himself,  has  said  almost  no- 
thing of  the  social  righteousness  of  his  people.  Israel's 
righteousness,  as  we  saw  in  our  fourteenth  chapter,  has 
had  the  very  different  meaning  for  our  prophet  of  her 
pardon  and  restoration  to  her  rights.  But  in  ch.  Ivi.  9- 
lix.  we  shall  find  the  blame  of  civic  wrong,  and  of  other 
kinds  of  sin  of  which  Israel  could  only  have  been  guilty 
in  her  own  land  ;  we  shall  listen  to  exhortations  to 
social  justice  and  mercy  like  those  we  heard  from 
Isaiah  to  his  generation.     Yet  these  are  mingled  with 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      409 

voices,  and  concluded  with  promises,  which  speak  of 
the  Return  as  imminent.  Undoubtedly  exilic  elements 
reveal  themselves.  And  the  total  impression  is  that 
some  prophet  of  the  late  Exile,  and  probably  the 
one,  whom  we  have  been  following,  collected  these 
reminiscences  of  his  people's  sin  in  the  days  of  their 
freedom,  in  order  to  remind  them,  before  they  went 
back  again  to  political  responsibility,  why  it  was  they 
were  punished  and  how  apt  they  were  to  go  astray. 
Believing  this  to  be  the  true  solution  of  a  somewhat 
difficult  problem,  we  have  ventured  to  gather  this 
mixed  group  of  prophecies  under  the  title  of  the 
Rekindling  of  the  Civic  Conscience.  They  fall  into 
three  groups  :  first,  ch.  Ivi.  9-lvii. ;  second,  ch.  Iviii.  ; 
third,  ch.  lix.  We  shall  see  that,  while  there  is  no 
reason  to  doubt  the  exilic  origin  of  the  whole  of  the 
second,  the  first  and  third  of  these  are  mainly  occupied 
with  the  description  of  a  state  of  things  that  prevailed 
only  before  the  Exile,  but  they  contain  also  exilic 
observations  and  conclusions. 

I.  A  Conscience  but  no  God  (ch.  Ivi.  9-lvii.). 

This  is  one  of  the  sections  which  almost  decisively 
place  the  literary  unity  of  ^^  Second  Isaiah "  past 
possibility  of  belief.  If  ch.  Ivi.  1-8  flushes  with  the 
dawn  of  restoration,  ch.  Ivi.  9-lvii.  is  very  dark  with 
the  coming  of  the  night,  which  preceded  that  dawn. 
Almost  none  dispute,  that  the  greater  part  of  this  pro- 
phecy must  have  been  composed  before  the  people  left 
Palestine  for  exile.  The  state  of  Israel,  which  it  pic- 
tures, recalls  the  descriptions  of  Hosea,  and  of  the 
eleventh  chapter  of  Zechariah.  God's  flock  are  still 
in  charge  of  their  own  shepherds  (Ivi.  9-12), — a  de- 
scription inapplicable  to  Israel  in  exile.    The  shepherds 


4IO  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

are  sleepy,  greedy,  sensual,  drunkards, — victims  to  the 
curse,  against  which  Amos  and  Isaiah  hurled  their 
strongest  woes.  That  sots  like  them  should  be  spared 
while  the  righteous  die  unnoticed  deaths  (Ivii.  i)  can 
only  be  explained  by  the  approaching  judgement.  No 
man  considereth  that  the  righteous  is  taken  away  from  the 
EviL  The  Evil  cannot  mean,  as  some  have  thought, 
persecution, — for  while  the  righteous  are  to  escape  it 
and  enter  into  peace,  the  wicked  are  spared  for  it. 
It  must  be  a  Divine  judgement, — the  Exile,  But  he 
entereth  peace,  they  rest  in  their  beds,  each  one  that  hath 
walked  straight  before  him, — for  the  righteous  there  is  the 
peace  of  death  and  the  undisturbed  tomb  of  his  fathers. 
What  an  enviable  fate  when  emigration,  and  disper- 
sion through  foreign  lands,  are  the  prospect  of  the 
nation !  Israel  shall  find  her  pious  dead  when  she 
returns  !  The  verse  recalls  that  summons  in  Isa.  xxvi., 
in  which  we  heard  the  Mother  Nation  calling  upon  the 
dead  she  had  left  in  Palestine  to  rise  and  increase  her 
returned  numbers. 

Then  the  prophet  indicts  the  nation  for  a  religious 
and  political  unfaithfulness,  which  we  know  was  their 
besetting  sin  in  the  days  before  they  left  the  Holy 
Land.  The  scenery,  in  whose  natural  objects  he 
describes  them  seeking  their  worship,  is  the  scenery 
of  Palestine,  not  of  Mesopotamia, — terebinths  and  wddies, 
and  clefts  of  the  rocks,  and  smooth  stones  of  the  wddies. 
The  unchaste  and  bloody  sacrifices  with  which  he 
charges  them  bear  the  appearance  more  of  Canaanite 
than  of  Babylonian  idolatry.  The  humiliating  poli- 
tical suits  which  they  paid — thou  wentest  to  the  king 
/with  ointment,  and  didst  increase  thy  perfumes,  and  didst 
send  thine  ambassadors  afar  off,  and  didst  debase  thyself 
(iden  unto  Sheol  (ver.  9) — could  not  be  attributed  to  a 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE      411 

captive  people,  but  were  the  sort  of  degrading  diplo- 
macy that  Israel  learned  from  Ahaz.  While  the  painful 
pursuit  of  strength  (ver.  10),  the  shabby  political 
cowardice  (ver.  11),  the  fanatic  sacrifice  of  manhood's 
purity  and  childhood's  life  (ver.  5),  and  especially  the 
evil  conscience  which  drove  their  blind  hearts  through 
such  pain  and  passion  in  a  sincere  quest  for  righteous- 
ness (ver.  12),  betray  the  age  of  idolatrous  reaction 
from  the  great  Puritan  victory  of  701, — a  generation 
exaggerating  all  the  old  falsehood  and  fear,  against 
which  Isaiah  had  inveighed,  with  the  new  conscience 
of  sin  which  his  preaching  had  created.*  The  dark 
streak  of  blood  and  lust  that  runs  through  the  con- 
demned idolatry,  and  the  stern  conscience  which  only 
deepens  its  darkness,  are  sufficient  reasons  for  dating 
the  prophecy  after  700.  The  very  phrases  of  Isaiah, 
which  it  contains,  have  tempted  some  to  attribute  it 
to  himself.  But  it  certainly  does  not  date  from  such 
troubles  as  brought  his  old  age  to  the  grave.  The  evil, 
which  it  portends,  is,  as  we  have  seen,  no  persecution 
of  the  righteous,  but  a  Divine  judgement  upon  the  whole 
nation, — presumably  the  Exile.  We  may  date  it,  there- 
fore, some  time  after  Isaiah's  death,  but  certainly — and 
this  is  the  important  point — before  the  Exile.  This, 
then,  is  an  unmistakably  pre-exilic  constituent  of 
'^Second  Isaiah." 

Another  feature  corroborates  this  prophecy's  original 
independence  of  its  context.  Its  st3^!e  is  immediately 
and  extremely  rugged.  The  reader  of  the  original  feels 
the  difference  at  once.  It  is  the  difference  between 
travel  on  the  level  roads  of  Mesopotamia,  with  their 
unchanging  horizons,   and    the  jolting  carriage  of  the 

*  See  vol.  i.,  pp.  363,  364. 


412  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

stony  paths  of  Higher  Palestine,  with  their  gUmpses 
rapidly  shifting  from  gorge  to  peak.  But  the  remark- 
able thing  is  that  the  usual  style  of  "  Second  Isaiah  "  is 
resumed  before  the  end  of  the  prophecy.  One  cannot 
always  be  sure  of  the  exact  verse  at  which  such  a 
hterary  change  takes  place.  In  this  case  some  feel  it 
as  soon  as  the  middle  of  ver.  1 1,  with  the  words,  Have 
not  I  held  My  peace  even  of  long  time,  and  thou  fearest 
Me  not?*  It  is  surely  more  sensible,  however,  after 
ver.  14,  in  which  we  are  arrested  in  any  case  by  an 
alteration  of  standpoint.  In  ver.  14  we  are  on  in  the 
Exile  again — before  ver.  14  I  cannot  recognise  any 
exilic  symptom^ — and  the  way  of  return  is  before  us. 
And  one  said, — it  is  the  repetition  to  the  letter  of  the 
strange  anonymous  voice  of  ch.  xl.  6, — and  one  said. 
Cast  ye  up,  Cast  ye  up,  open  tip,  or  sweep  open,  a  way,  lift 
the  stumbling  block  from  the  way  of  My  people.  And 
now  the  rhythm  has  certainly  returned  to  the  prevail- 
ing style  of  "  Second  Isaiah,"  and  the  temper  is  again 
that  of  promise  and  comfort. 

These  sudden  shiftings  of  circumstance  and  of 
prospect  are  enough  to  show  the  thoughtful  reader 
of  Scripture  how  hard  is  the  problem  of  the  unity 
of"  Second  Isaiah."  On  which  we  make  here  no  further 
remark,  but  pass  at  once  to  the  more  congenial  task 
of  studying  the  great  prophecy,  vv.  14-21,  which  rises 
one  and  simple  from  these  fragments  as  does  some 
homogeneous  rock  from  the  confusing  debris  of  several 
geological  epochs. 

*So  Ewald,  Cheyne  and  Biiggs.  Ewald  takes  Ivi.  9-lvii.  \\a  as  an 
interruption,  borrowed  from  an  earlier  prophet  in  a  time  of  persecution^ 
of  the  exilic  prophecy,  which  goes  on  smoothly  from  Ivi.  8  to  Ivii. 
116.  We  have  seen  that  it  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  Ivi.  9-lvii. 
rose  from  a  time  of  persecution. 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      413 

For  let  the  date  and  original  purpose  of  the  fragments 
we  have  considered  be  what  they  may,  this  prophecy 
has  been  placed  as  their  conclusion  with  at  least  some 
rational,  not  to  say  spiritual,  intention.  As  it  suddenly 
issues  here,  it  gathers  up,  in  the  usual  habit  of  Scrip- 
ture, God's  moral  indictment  of  an  evil  generation, 
by  a  great  manifesto  of  the  Divine  nature,  and  a 
sharp  distinction  of  the  characters  and  fate  of  men. 
Now,  of  what  kind  is  the  generation,  to  whose  indict- 
ment this  prophecy  comes  as  a  conclusion  ?  It  is  a 
generation  which  has  lost  its  God,  but  kept  its  con- 
science. This  sums  up  the  national  character  which 
is  sketched  in  vv.  3-13.  These  Israelites  had  lost 
Jehovah  and  His  pure  law.  But  the  religion  into 
which  they  fell  back  was  not,  therefore,  easy  or  cold. 
On  the  contrary,  it  was  very  intense  and  very  stern. 
The  people  put  energy  in  it,  and  passion,  and  sacrifice 
that  went  to  cruel  lengths.  Belief,  too,  in  its  practical 
results  kept  the  people  from  fainting  under  the  weari- 
ness in  which  its  fanaticism  reacted.  In  the  length 
of  thy  way  thou  wast  wearied^  yet  thou  didst  not  say.  It 
is  hopeless ;  life  for  thy  hand — that  is,  real,  practical 
strength — didst  thou  find:  wherefore  thou  didst  not^ 
break  down.  And  they  practised  their  painful  and 
passionate  idolatry  with  a  real  conscience.  They  were 
seeking  to  work  out  righteousness  for  themselves 
(ver.  1 2  should  be  rendered  :  /  will  expose  your  right- 
eousness, the  caricature  of  righteousness  which  you 
attempt).  The  most  worldly  statesman  among  them 
had  his  sincere  ideal  for  Israel,  and  intended  to 
enable  her,  in  the  possession  of  her  land  and  holy 
mountain,  to  fulfil  her  destiny  (ver.  13).  The  most 
gross  idolater  had  a  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteous- 
ness, and   burnt   his  children   or  sacrificed  his  purity 


414  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

to  satisfy  the  vague  promptings  of  his  unenlightened 
conscience. 

It  was  indeed  a  generation  which  had  kept  its 
conscience,  but  lost  its  God ;  and  what  we  have  in  vv. 
15  to  21  is  just  the  lost  and  forgotten  God  speaking 
of  His  Nature  and  His  Will.  They  have  been  wor- 
shipping idols,  creatures  of  their  own  fears  and  cruel 
passions.  But  He  is  the  high  and  lofty  one — two  of 
the  simplest  adjectives  in  the  language,  yet  sufficient 
to  lift  Him  they  describe  above  the  distorting  mists 
of  human  imagination.  They  thought  of  the  Deity 
as  sheer  wrath  and  force,  scarcely  to  be  appeased  by 
men  even  through  the  most  bloody  rites  and  passionate 
self-sacrifice.  But  He  says.  The  high  and  the  holy  I 
dwell  in,  yet  with  him  also  that  is  contrite  and  humble 
of  spirit,  to  revive  the  spirit  of  the  humble,  and  to  revive 
the  heart  of  the  contrite  ones.  The  rest  of  the  chapter 
is  to  the  darkened  consciences  a  plain  statement  of 
the  moral  character  of  God's  working.  God  always 
punishes  sin,  and  yet  the  sinner  is  not  abandoned. 
Though  he  go  in  his  own  way,  God  watches  his  ways 
in  order  to  heal  him.  I  create  the  fruit  of  the  lips, 
that  is,  thanksgivings :  Peace,  peace,  to  him  that  is  far 
off  and  him  that  is  near,  saith  Jehovah,  and  I  will  heal 
him.  But,  as  in  ch.  xlviii.  and  ch.  1.,  a  warning  comes 
last,  and  behind  the  clear,  forward  picture  of  the 
comforted  and  restored  of  Jehovah  we  see  the  weird 
background  of  gloomy,  restless  wickedness. 

II.   Social  Service  and  the  Sabbath  (ch.  Iviii.). 

Several  critics  (including  Professor  Cheyne)  regard 
ch.  Iviii.  as  post-exilic,  because  of  its  declarations 
against  formal  fasting  and  the  neglect  of  social  charity, 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      415; 

which  are  akin  to  those  of  post-exilic  prophets  hke 
Zechariah  and  Joel,  and  seem  to  imply  that  the  people 
addressed  are  again  independent  and  responsible  for  the 
conduct  of  their  social  duties.  The  question  largely 
turns  on  the  amount  of  social  responsibility  we  con- 
ceive the  Jews  to  have  had  during  the  Exile.  Now  we 
have  seen  that  many  of  them  enjoyed  considerable 
freedom  :  they  had  their  houses  and  households ;  they 
had  their  slaves ;  they  traded  and  were  possessed  of 
wealth.  They  were,  therefore,  in  a  position  to  be 
chargeable  with  the  duties  to  which  ch.  Iviii.  calls 
them.  The  addresses  of  Ezekiel  to  his  fellow-exiles 
have  many  features  in  common  with  ch.  Iviii.,  although 
they  do  not  mention  fasting ;  and  fasting  itself  was  a 
characteristic  habit  of  the  exiles,  in  regard  to  which  it 
is  quite  likely  they  should  err  just  as  is  described  in 
ch.  Iviii.  Moreover,  there  is  a  resemblance  between 
this  chapter's  comments  upon  the  people's  enquiries  of 
God  (ver.  2)  and  Ezekiel's  reply  when  certain  of  the 
elders  of  Israel  came  to  enquire  of  Jehovah.*  And 
again  vv.  11  and  12  of  ch.  Iviii.  are  evidently  ad- 
dressed to  people  in  prospect  of  return  to  their  own 
land  and  restoration  of  their  city.  We  accordingly 
date  ch.  Iviii.  from  the  Exile.  But  we  see  no  reason 
to  put  it  as  early  as  Ewald  does,  who  assigns  it  to  a 
younger  contemporary  of  Ezekiel.  There  is  no 
linguistic  evidence  that  it  is  an  insertion,  or  from 
another  hand  than  that  of  our  prophet.  Surely  there 
were  room  and  occasion  for  it  in  those  years  which 
followed  the  actual  deliverance  of  the  Jews  by  Cyrus, 
but  preceded  the  restoration  of  Jerusalem, — those 
years  in  which  there  were  no  longer  political  problems 

*  Ezek.  xxi. ;  cf,  xxxiii.  30  £ 


4i6  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

in  the  way  of  the  people's  return  for  our  prophet  to 
discuss,  and  therefore  their  moral  defects  were  all  the 
more  thrust  upon  his  attention  ;  and  especially,  when 
in  the  near  prospect  of  their  political  independence, 
their  social  sins  roused  his  apprehensions. 

Those,  who  have  never  heard  an  angry  Oriental  speak, 
have  no  idea  of  what  power  of  denunciation  lies  in  the 
human  throat.  In  the  East,  where  a  dry  climate  and 
large  leisure  bestow  upon  the  voice  a  depth  and  supple- 
ness prevented  by  our  vulgar  haste  of  life  and  teasing 
weather,  men  have  elaborated  their  throat-letters  to  a 
number  unknown  in  any  Western  alphabet ;  and  upon 
the  lowest  notes  they  have  put  an  edge,  that  comes  up 
shrill  and  keen  through  the  roar  of  the  upper  gutturals, 
till  you  feel  their  wrath  cut  as  well  as  sweep  you  before 
it.  In  the  Oriental  throat,  speech  goes  down  deep 
enough  to  echo  all  the  breadth  of  the  inner  man ;  while 
the  possibility  of  expressing  within  so  supple  an  organ 
nearly  every  tone  of  scorn  or  surprise  preserves  anger 
from  that  suspicion  of  spite  or  of  exhaustion,  which  is 
conveyed  by  too  liberal  a  use  of  the  nasal  or  palatal 
letters.  Hence  in  the  Hebrew  language  to  call  with  the 
throat  means  to  call  with  vehemence,  but  with  self- 
command  ;  with  passion,  yet  as  a  man  ;  using  every 
figure  of  satire,  but  earnestly;  neither  forgetting  wrath 
for  mere  art's  sake,  nor  allowing  wrath  to  escape  the 
grip  of  the  stronger  muscles  of  the  voice.  It  is  to  lift 
the  voice  like  a  trumpet, — an  instrument,  which,  with 
whatever  variety  of  music  its  upper  notes  may  indulge 
our  ears,  never  suffers  its  main  tone  of  authority  to 
drop,  never  slacks  its  imperative  appeal  to  the  wills  of 
the  hearers. 

This  is  the  style  of  the  chapter  before  us,  which  opens 
with  the  words.  Call  with  the  throat,  spare  not,  lift  up 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      417 

thy  voice  like  a  trumpet.  Perhaps  no  subject  more 
readily  provokes  to  satire  and  sneers  than  the  subject 
of  the  chapter, — the  union  of  formal  religion  and 
unlovely  life.  And  yet  in  the  chapter  there  is  not  a 
sneer  from  first  to  last.  The  speaker  suppresses  the 
temptation  to  use  his  nasal  tones,  and  utters,  not  as  the 
satirist,  but  as  the  prophet.  For  his  purpose  is  not  to 
sport  with  his  people's  hypocrisy,  but  to  sweep  them  out 
of  it.  Before  he  has  done,  his  urgent  speech,  that  has 
not  lingered  to  sneer  nor  exhausted  itself  in  screaming, 
passes  forth  to  spend  its  unchecked  impetus  upon  final 
promise  and  gospel.  It  is  a  wise  lesson  from  a  master 
preacher,  and  half  of  the  fruitlessness  of  modern  preach- 
ing is  due  to  the  neglect  of  it.  The  pulpit  tempts  men 
to  be  either  too  bold  or  too  timid  about  sin ;  either  to 
whisper,  or  to  scold ;  to  euphemise  or  to  exaggerate  ; 
to  be  conventional  or  hysterical.  But  two  things  are 
necessary, — the  facts  must  be  stated,  and  the  whole 
manhood  of  the  preacher,  and  not  only  his  scorn  or 
only  his  anger  or  only  an  official  temper,  brought  to 
bear  upon  them.  Call  with  the  throat,  spare  not,  like  a 
trumpet  lift  up  thy  voice,  and  publish  to  My  people  their 
transgression,  and  to  the  house  of  Jacob  their  sin. 

The  subject  of  the  chapter  is  the  habits  of  a  religious 
people, — the  earnestness  and  regularity  of  their  religious 
performance  contrasted  with  the  neglect  of  their  social 
relations.  The  second  verse,  "  the  descriptions  in  which 
are  evidently  drawn  from  life,"*  tells  us  that  the  people 
sought  God  daily,  and  had  a  zeal  to  know  His  ways,  as 
a  nation  that  had  done  righteousness, — fulfilled  the  legal 
worship, — and  had  not  forsaken  the  lawf  of  their  God: 
they  ask  of  Me  laws  t  of  righteousness, — that  is,  a  legal 

*  Delitzsch.  f  Mishpat  and  mishpatim,  cf.  p.  299. 

VOL.    II.  27 


4i8  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

worship,  the  performance  of  which  might  make  them 
righteous, — and  in  drawing  near  to  God  they  take  delight. 
They  had,  in  fact,  a  great  greed  for  ordinances  and 
functions,* — for  the  revival  of  such  forms  as  they  had 
been  accustomed  to  of  old.  Like  some  poor  prostrate 
rose,  whose  tendrils  miss  the  props  by  which  they  were 
wont  to  rise  to  the  sun,  the  religious  conscience  and 
affections  of  Israel,  violently  torn  from  their  immemorial 
supports,  lay  limp  and  windswept  on  a  bare  land,  and 
longed  for  God  to  raise  some  substitute  for  those  altars 
of  Zion  by  which,  in  the  dear  days  of  old,  they  had  lifted 
themselves  to  the  light  of  His  face.  In  the  absence  of 
anything  better,  they  turned  to  the  chill  and  shadowed 
forms  of  the  fasts  they  had  instituted.!  But  they  did 
not  thereby  reach  the  face  of  God.  Wherefore  have 
we  fasted,  say  they,  and  Thou  hast  not  seen  ?  we  have 
humbled  our  souls,  and  Thou  takest  no  notice?  The 
answer  comes  swiftly  :  Because  your  fasting  is  a  mere 
form !  Lo,  in  the  very  day  of  your  fast  ye  find  a  business 
to  do,  and  all  your  workmen  you  overtask.  So  formal 
is  your  fasting  that  your  ordinary  eager,  selfish,  cruel 
Hfe  goes  on  beside  it  just  the  same.  Nay,  it  is  worse 
than  usual,  for  your  worthless,  wearisome  fast  but  puts 
a  sharper  edge  upon  your  temper :  Lo,  for  strife  and 
contention  ye  fast,  to  smite  with  the  fist  of  tyranny.  And 
it  has  no  religious  value  :  Ye  fast  not  like  as  you  are 
fasting  to-day  so  as  to  make  your  voice  heard  on  high. 
Is  such  the  fast  that  I  choose, — a  day  for  a  man  to  afflict 
himself?  Is  it  to  droop  his  head  like  a  rush,  and  grovel 
on  sackcloth  and  ashes  ?     Is  it  this  thou  wilt  call  a  fast 

*  Such  as  is  also  expressed  by  exiles  in  Psalms  xlii.,  xliii.  and  Ixiii., 
but  there  with  what  spiritual  temper,  here  with  what  a  hard  legal 
conception  of  righteousness. 

t  For  these  see  p.  6i. 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      419 

and  a  day  acceptable  to  Jehovah  ?  One  of  the  great 
surprises  of  the  human  heart  is,  that  self-denial  does 
not  win  merit  or  peace.  But  assuredly  it  does  not, 
if  love  be  not  with  it.  Though  I  give  my  body  to  be 
burned  and  have  not  love,  it  profiteth  me  nothing. 
Self-denial  without  love  is  self-indulgence.  Is  not  this 
the  fast  that  I  choose  ?  to  loosen  the  bonds  of  tyranny y  to 
shatter  the  joints  of  the  yoke,  to  let  the  crushed  go  free^ 
and  that  ye  burst  every  yoke.  Is  it  not  to  break  to  the 
hungry  thy  bread^  and  that  thou  bring  home  wandering 
poor?*  when  thou  seest  one  naked  that  thou  cover  him^ 
and  that  from  thine  own  flesh  thou  hide  not  thyself? 
Then  shall  break  forth  like  the  morning  thy  light,  and 
thy  health  f  shall  immediately  spring.  Yea,  go  before 
thee  shall  thy  righteousness,  the  glory  of  Jehovah  shall 
sweep  thee  on,  literally,  gather  thee  up.  Then  thou  shalt 
calif  and  Jehovah  shall  answer;  thou  shalt  cry,  and  He 
shall  say,  Here  am  I.  If  thou  shalt  put  from  thy  midst 
the  yoke,  and  the  putting  forth  of  the  finger,  and  the 
speaking  of  naughtiness — three  degrees  of  the  subtlety  of 
selfishness,  which  when  forced  back  from  violent  oppres- 
sion will  retreat  to  scorn  and  from  open  scorn  to  back- 
biting,— and  if  thou  draw  out  to  the  hungry  thy  soul, — 
tear  out  what  is  dear  to  thee  in  order  to  fill  his  need, 
the  strongest  expression  for  self-denial  which  the  Old 
Testament  contains, — and  satisfy  the  soul  that  is  afflicted, 
then  shall  uprise  in  the  darkness  thy  light,  and  thy  gloom 


*  Literally,  the  poor,  the  wandering.  It  was  a  frequent  phrase  in  the 
Exile  :  Lam.  iii.  19,  Remember  mine  affliction  and  my  homelessness ; 
i.  7,  Jerusalem  in  the  day  of  her  affliction  and  her  homelessness.  LXX. 
aareyoi,  roofless. 

f  Probably  the  fresh  flesh  which  appears  through  a  healing  wound. 
Made  classical  by  Jeremiah,  who  uses  it  thrice  of  Israel, — in  the  famous 
text.  Is  there  no  balm,  etc.,  x.  22;  and  in  xxx.  17;  xxxiii.  6. 


420  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

shall  be  as  the  noonday.  And  guide  thee  shall  Jehovah 
continually f  and  satisfy  thy  soul  in  droughts^  and  thy  limbs 
make  lissom;  and  thou  shalt  be  like  a  garden  well-watered^^ 
and  like  a  spring  of  water  whose  waters  fail  not.  And 
they  that  are  of  thee  shall  build  the  ancient  ruins;  the 
foundations  of  generation  upon  generation  thou  shalt  raise 
up,  and  they  shall  be  calling  thee  Repai7'er-of-the-Breachy 
Restorer-of-Pathsfor-habitation.'\  Thus  their  righteous- 
ness in  the  sense  of  external  vindication  and  stability, 
which  so  prevails  with  our  prophet,  shall  be  due  to 
their  righteousness  in  that  inward  moral  sense  in  which 
Amos  and  Isaiah  use  the  word.  And  so  concludes  a 
passage,  which  fills  the  earliest,  if  not  the  highest,  place 
in  the  glorious  succession  of  Scriptures  of  Practical 
Love,  to  which  belong  the  Sixty-first  chapter  of  Isaiah, 
the  Twenty-fifth  of  Matthew  and  the  Thirteenth  of  First 
Corinthians.  Its  lesson  is, — to  go  back  to  the  figure  of 
the  draggled  rose, — that  no  mere  forms  of  religion,  how- 
ever divinely  prescribed  or  conscientiously  observed,  can 
of  themselves  lift  the  distraught  and  trailing  affections 
of  man  to  the  light  and  peace  of  Heaven  ;  but  that 
our  fellow-men,  if  we  cling  to  them  with  love  and 
with  arms  of  help,  are  ever  the  strongest  props  by 
which  we  may  rise  to  God  ;  that  character  grows  rich 
and  life  joyful,  not  by  the  performance  of  ordinances 
with  the  cold  conscience  of  duty,  but  by  acts  of  service 
with  the  warm  heart  of  love. 

And  yet  such  a  prophecy  concludes  with  an  exhorta- 
tion to  the  observance  of  one  religious  form,  and  places 
the  keeping  of  the  Sabbath  on  a  level  with  the  practice 
of  love.  If  thou  turn  from  the  Sabbath  thy  foot,  from 
doing  thine  own  business  on  My  holy  day;X  and  callestthe 

*  Jer.  xxxi.  12.  f  Cf.  Job  xxiv.  13.  J  Cf.  Amos  viii.  5. 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      42 1 

Sabbath  Pleasure, — the  word  is  a  strong  one,  Delight^ 
Delicacy,  Luxury, — Holy  of  Jehovah,  Honourable;  and  dost 
honour  it  so  as  not  to  do  thine  own  ways,  or  find  thine 
own  business,  or  keep  making  talk :  then  thou  shall  find 
thy  pleasure,  or  thy  delight,  in  Jehovah, — note  the  parallel 
of  pleasure  in  the  Sabbath  and  pleasure  in  Jehovah, — 
and  He  shall  cause  thee  to  ride  on  the  high  places  of  the 
land,  and  make  thee  to  feed  upon  the  portion  of  Jacob  thy 
father :  yea,  the  mouth  of  Jehovah  hath  spoken. 

Our  prophet,  then,  while  exalting  the  practical  Ser- 
vice of  Man  at  the  expense  of  certain  religious  forms, 
equally  exalts  the  observance  of  Sabbath  ;  his  scorn 
for  their  formalism  changes  when  he  comes  to  it  into  a 
strenuous  enthusiasm  of  defence.  This  remarkable  fact, 
which  is  strictly  analogous  to  the  appearance  of  the 
Fourth  Commandment  in  a  code  otherwise  consisting 
of  purely  moral  and  religious  laws,  is  easily  explained. 
Observe  that  our  prophet  bases  his  plea  for  Sabbath- 
keeping,  and  his  assurance  that  it  must  lead  to  pros- 
perity, not  on  its  physical,  moral  or  social  benefits,  but 
simply  upon  its  acknowledgment  of  God.  Not  only  is 
the  Sabbath  to  be  honoured  because  it  is  the  Holy  of 
Jehovah  and  Honourable,  but  making  it  one^s  pleasure 
is  equivalent  to  finding  one^s  pleasure  in  Him.  The 
parallel  between  these  two  phrases  in  ver.  13  and 
ver.  14  is  evident,  and  means  really  this :  Inasmuch 
as  ye  do  it  unto  the  Sabbath,  ye  do  it  unto  Me.  The 
prophet,  then,  enforces  the  Sabbath  simply  on  account 
of  its  religious  and  Godward  aspect.  Now,  let  us  re- 
member the  truth,  which  he  so  often  enforces,  that  the 
Service  of  Man,  however  ardently  and  widely  pursued, 
can  never  lead  or  sum  up  our  duty ;  that  the  Service  of 
God  has,  logically  and  practically,  a  prior  claim,  for 
without   it   the   Service   of  Man   must   suffer  both  in 


422  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

obligation  and  in  resource.  God  must  be  our  first  resort 
— must  have  our  first  homage,  affection  and  obedience. 
But  this  cannot  well  take  place  without  some  amount 
of  definite  and  regular  and  frequent  devotion  to  Him. 
In  the  most  spiritual  religion  there  is  an  irreducible 
minimum  of  formal  observance.  Now,  in  that  wholesale 
destruction  of  religious  forms,  which  took  place  at  the 
overthrow  of  Jerusalem,*  there  was  only  one  institution, 
which  was  not  necessarily  involved.  The  Sabbath  did 
not  fall  with  the  Temple  and  the  Altar :  the  Sabbath 
was  independent  of  all  locality ;  the  Sabbath  was  pos- 
sible even  in  exile.  It  was  the  one  solemn,  public  and 
frequently  regular  form  in  which  the  nation  could  turn 
to  God,  glorify  Him  and  enjoy  Him.  Perhaps,  too, 
through  the  Babylonian  fashion  of  solemnising  the 
seventh  day,  our  prophet  realised  again  the  primitive 
institution  of  the  Sabbath,  and  was  reminded  that,  since 
seven  days  is  a  regular  part  of  the  natural  year,  the 
Sabbath  is,  so  to  speak,  sanctioned  by  the  statutes  of 
Creation. 

An  institution,  which  is  so  primitive,  which  is  so 
independent  of  locality,  which  forms  so  natural  a  part 
of  the  course  of  time,  but  which,  above  all,  has  twice — 
in  the  Jewish  Exile  and  in  the  passage  of  Judaism  to 
Christianity — survived  the  abrogation  and  disappear- 
ance of  all  other  forms  of  the  religion  with  which  it  was 
connected,  and  has  twice  been  affirmed  by  prophecy  or 
practice  to  be  an  essential  part  of  spiritual  religion  and 
the  equal  of  social  morality, — has  amply  proved  its 
Divine  origin  and  its  indispensableness  to  man. 

*  See  pp.  43  f. 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      423 


III.  Social  Crimes  (ch.  lix). 

Ch.  lix.  is,  at  first  sight,  the  most  difficult  of  all  of 
^'  Second  Isaiah  "  to  assign  to  a  date.*  For  it  evidently 
contains  both  pre-exilic  and  exilic  elements.  On  the 
one  hand,  its  charges  of  guilt  imply  that  the  people  ad- 
dressed by  it  are  responsible  for  civic  justice  to  a  degree, 
which  could  hardly  be  imputed  to  the  Jews  in  Babylon. 
We  saw  that  the  Jews  in  the  Exile  had  an  amount  of 
social  freedom  and  domestic  responsibility  which  amply 
accounts  for  the  kind  of  sins  they  are  charged  with  in 
ch.  Iviii.  But  ver.  14  of  ch.  lix.  reproaches  them  with 
the  collapse  of  justice  in  the  very  seat  and  public  office 
of  justice,  of  which  it  was  not  possible  they  could  have 
been  guilty  except  in  their  own  land  and  in  the  days  of 
their  independence.  On  the  other  hand,  the  promises 
of  deliverance  in  ch.  lix.  read  very  much  as  if  they  were 
exilic.  Judgement  and  righteousness  are  employed  in 
ver.  9  in  their  exilic  sense,  f  and  God  is  pictured  exactly 
as  we  have  seen  Him  in  other  chapters  of  our  prophet. 

Are  we  then  left  with  a  mystery  ?  On  the  contrary, 
the  solution  is  clear.  Israel  is  followed  into  exile  by 
her  old  conscience.  The  charges  of  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel 
against  Jerusalem,  while  Jerusalem  was  still  a  "  civitas," 
ring  in  her  memory.  She  repeats  the  very  words. 
With  truth  she  says  that  her  present  state,  so  vividly 

*  Ewald  conceives  chs.  Iviii.,  lix.  to  be  the  work  of  a  younger  con- 
temporary of  Ezekiel,  to  which  thechief  author  of  "  Second  Isaiah"  has 
added  words  of  his  own  :  Iviii.  12,  lix.  21.  The  latter  is  evidently  an 
insertion  ;  cf.  change  of  person  and  of  number,  etc.  Delitzsch  puts 
the  passage  down  to  the  last  decade  of  the  Captivity,  when  for  a  little 
time  Cyrus  had  turned  away  from  Babylon,  and  the  Jews  despaired 
of  his  coming  to  save  them. 

•j-  See  pp.  219  flf. 


4H  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

described  in  vv.  9-1 1,  is  due  to  sins  of  old,  of  which, 
though  perhaps  she  can  no  longer  commit"  them,  she  still 
feels  the  guilt.  Conscience  always  crowds  the  years 
together ;  there  is  no  difference  of  time  in  the  eyes  of 
God  the  Judge.  And  it  was  natural,  as  we  have  said 
already,  that  the  nation  should  remember  her  besetting 
sins  at  this  time  ;  that  her  .  civic  conscience  should 
awake  again,  just  as  she  was  again  about  to  become  a 
civitas.*  t 

The  whole  of  this  chapter  is  simply  the  expansion 
and  enforcement  of  the  first  two  verses,  that  keep 
clanging  like  the  clangour  of  a  great,  high  bell :  Behold, 
JehovaHs  hand  is  not  shortened  that  it  cannot  save,  neither 
is  His  ear  heavy  that  it  cannot  hear ;  but  your  iniquities 
have  been  separators  between  you  and  your  God,  and  your 


*  Another  slight  trace  reveals  the  conglomerate  nature  of  the 
chapter.  If,  as  the  earlier  verses  indicate,  it  was  Israel  that  sinned, 
then  it  is  the  rebellious  in  Israel  who  should  be  punished.  In  ver. 
l8a,  therefore,  the  adversaries  or  enemies  ought  to  be  Israelites.  But 
in  186  the  foreign  islands  are  included.  The  LXX.  has  not  this  addition. 
Bredenkamp  takes  the  words  for  an  insertion.  Yet  the  consequences 
of  Israel's  sin,  according  to  the  chapter,  are  not  so  much  the  punish- 
ment of  the  rebellious  among  the  people  as  the  dela}-  of  the  deliver- 
ance for  the  whole  nation, — a  deliverance  which  Jehovah  is  represented 
as  rising  to  accomplish,  the  moment  the  people  express  the  sense  of 
their  rebellion  and  are  penitent.  The  adversaries  and  enemies  of  ver. 
18,  therefore,  are  the  oppressors  of  Israel,  the  foreigners  and  heathen  ; 
and  186  with  its  islands  comes  in  quite  naturally. 

f  Note  on  mishpat  and  Ssedhaqah  in  ch.  lix.  This  chapter  is  a 
good  one  for  studj'ing  the  various  meanings  of  mishpat.  In  ver.  4  the 
verb  shaphat  is  used  in  its  simplest  sense  of  going  to  law.  In  vv.  8  and 
14  mishpat  is  a  quality  or  duty  of  man.  But  in  ver.  9  it  is  rather 
what  man  expects  from  God,  and  what  is  far  from  man  because  of  his 
sins;  it  \s  judgement  ox\.  God's  side,  or  God's  saving  ordinance.  In  this 
sense  it  is  probably  to  be  taken  in  ver.  15, — Ssedhaqah  follows  the  same 
parallel.  This  goes  to  prove  that  we  have  two  distinct  prophecies 
amalgamated,  unless  we  believe  that  a  play  upon  the  words  is  intended. 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.      425 

sins  have  hidden  Wis  face  from  you,  that  He  will  not  hear. 
There  is  but  one  thing  that  comes  between  the  human 
heart  and  the  Real  Presence  and  Infinite  Power  of  God; 
and  that  one  thing  is  Sin.  The  chapter  labours  to  show 
how  real  God  is.  Its  opening  verses  talk  of  His  Hand, 
His  Ear,  His  Face.  And  the  closing  verses  paint  Him 
with  the  passions  and  the  armour  of  a  man, — a  Hero  in 
such  solitude  and  with  such  forward  force,  that  no  im- 
agination can  fail  to  see  the  Vivid,  Lonely  Figure.  And 
He  saw  that  there  was  no  man,  and  He  wondered  that 
there  was  none  to  interpose;  therefore  His  own  right  arm 
brought  salvation  unto  Him,  and  His  righteousness  it 
upheld  Him.  And  He  put  on  righteousness  like  a  breast- 
plate and  salvation  for  an  helmet  upon  His  head;  and  He 
put  on  garments  of  vengeance  for  clothing,  and  wrapped 
Himself  in  zeal  like  a  robe.  Do  not  let  us  suppose  this 
is  mere  poetry.  Conceive  what  inspires  it, — the  great 
truth  that  in  the  Infinite  there  is  a  heart  to  throb  for 
men  and  a  will  to  strike  for  them.  This  is  what  the 
writer  desires  to  proclaim,  and  what  we  believe  the 
Spirit  of  God  moved  his  poor  human  lips  to  give  their 
own  shape  to, — the  simple  truth  that  there  is  One,  how- 
ever hidden  He  may  be  to  men's  eyes,  who  feels  for 
men,  who  feels  hotly  for  men,  and  whose  will  is  quick 
and  urgent  to  save  them.  Such  an  One  tells  His  people, 
that  the  only  thmg  which  prevents  them  from  knowing 
how  real  His  heart  and  will  are — the  only  thing  which 
prevents  them  from  seeing  His  work  in  their  midst — is 
their  sin. 

The  roll  of  sins  to  which  the  prophet  attributes  the 
delay  of  the  people's  deliverance  is  an  awful  one  ;  and 
the  man  who  reads  it  with  conscience  asleep  might  con- 
clude that  it  was  meant  only  for  a  period  of  extraordinary 
violence  and  bloodshed.     Yet  the  chapter  implies  that 


426  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

society  exists,  and  that  at  least  the  forms  of  civilisation 
are  in  force.  Men  sue  one  another  before  the  usual 
courts.  But  none  sueth  in  righteousness  or  goeth  to  the 
law  in  truth.  They  trust  in  vanity  and  speak  lies.  All 
these  charges  might  be  true  of  a  society  as  outwardly 
respectable  as  our  own.  Nor  is  the  charge  of  bloodshed 
to  be  taken  literally.  The  Old  Testament  has  so  great 
a  regard  for  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  that  to  deny 
the  individual  his  rights  or  to  take  aw^ay  the  peace  of 
God  from  his  heart,  it  calls  the  shedding  of  innocent 
blood.  Isaiah  reminds  us  of  many  kinds  of  this  moral 
murder  when  he  SB-ys,  your  hands  are  full  of  blood:  seek 
justice,  relieve  the  oppressed,  judge  the  fatherless,  plead  for 
the  widow.  Ezekiel  reminds  us  of  others  when  he  tells 
how  God  spake  to  him,  that  if  he  warn  not  the  wicked^ 
and  the  same  wicked  shall  die  in  his  iniquity,  his  blood  will 
I  require  at  thy  hand.  And  again  a  Psalm  reminds  us 
of  the  time  when  the  Lord  maketh  inquisition  for  blood.  He 
forgetteth  not  the  cry  of  the  poor.*  This  is  what  the  Bible 
calls  murder  and  lays  its  burning  words  upon, — not 
such  acts  of  bloody  violence  as  now  and  then  make  all 
humanity  thrill  to  discover  that  in  the  heart  of  civilisa- 
tion there  exist  men  with  the  passions  of  the  ape  and  the 
tiger,  but  such  oppression  of  the  poor,  such  cowardice 
to  rebuke  evil,  such  negligence  to  restore  the  falling, 
such  abuse  of  the  characters  of  the  young  and  inno- 
cent, such  fraud  and  oppression  of  the  weak,  as  often 
exist  under  the  most  respectable  hfe,  and  employ  the 
weapons  of  a  Christian  civilisation  in  order  to  fulfil 
themselves.  We  have  need  to  take  the  bold,  violent 
standards  of  the  prophets  and  lay  them  to  our  own 
lives, — the  prophets  that  call  the  man   who  sells  his 

*  Isa.  i.  17  ;  Ezek.  ii.  18;  Psalm  ix.  12. 


Ivi.  9-lix.]  REKINDLING  OF  THE  CIVIC  CONSCIENCE.     427 

honesty  for  gain,  a  harlot,  and  hold  him  blood-guilty 
who  has  wronged,  tempted  or  neglected  his  brother. 
Do  not  let  us  suppose  that  these  crimson  verses  of  the 
Bible  may  be  passed  over  by  us  as  not  applicable  to 
ourselves.  They  do  not  refer  to  murderers  or  maniacs  : 
they  refer  to  social  crimes,  to  which  we  all  are  in  per- 
petual temptation,  and  of  which  we  all  are  more  or  less 
guilty, — the  neglect  of  the  weak,  the  exploitation  of  the 
poor  for  our  own  profit,  the  soiling  of  children's  minds, 
the  multiplying  of  temptation  in  the  way  of  God's 
little  ones,  the  mahce  that  leads  us  to  blast  another's 
character,  or  to  impute  to  his  action  evil  motives  for 
which  we  have  absolutely  no  grounds  save  the  envy  and 
sordidness  of  our  own  hearts.  Do  not  let  us  fail  to 
read  all  such  Verses  in  the  clear  light  which  John  the 
Apostle  throws  on  them  when  he  says  :  He  that  loveth 
not  abideth  in  death.  Whosoever  hateth  his  brother  is  a 
murderer. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

SALVATION  IN  SIGHT, 
Isaiah  Ix.-lxiii.  7. 

THE  deliverance  from  Babylon  has  long  been  certain, 
since  ch.  xlviii. ;  all  doubts  in  the  way  of  Return 
have  been  removed,  ch.  xlix.-lii.  12;  the  means  for 
the  spiritual  Restoration  of  the  people  have  been  suffi- 
ciently found,  ch.  liii.  and  preceding  chapters  on  the 
Servant ;  Zion  has  been  hailed  from  afar,  ch.  liv. ; 
last  calls  to  leave  Babylon  have  been  uttered,  ch.  Iv. ; 
last  councils  and  comforts,  Ivi,  1-8 ;  and  the  civic 
conscience  has  been  rekindled,  ch.  Ivi.  9-lix.  There 
remains  now  only  to  take  possession  of  the  City  her- 
self ;  to  rehearse  the  vocation  of  the  restored  people  ; 
and  to  realise  all  the  hopes,  fears,  hindrances  and 
practical  problems  of  the  future.  These  duties  occupy 
the  rest  of  our  prophecy,  chs.  Ix.-lxvi. 

Ch.  Ix.  is  a  prophecy  as  complete  in  itself  as  ch.  liv. 
The  City,  which  in  liv.  was  hailed  and  comforted  from 
afar,  is  in  ch.  Ix.  bidden  rise  and  enjoy  the  glory  that 
has  at  last  reached  her.  Her  splendours,  hinted  at 
in  ch.  liv.,  are  seen  in  full  and  evident  display.  In 
chs.  Ixi.-lxii.  her  prophet,  her  genius  and  representative, 
rehearses  to  her  his  duties,  and  sets  forth  her  place 
among  the  peoples.  And  in  ch.  Ixiii.  1-7  we  have 
another  of  those    theophanies   or   appearances   of  the 


Ix.-lxiii.  7.]  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  429 

— Sole  Divine  Author  of  His  people's  salvation,  which, 
abrupt  and  separate  as  if  to  heighten  the  sense  of  the 
solitariness  of  their  subject — occur  at  intervals  through- 
out our  prophecy, — for  instance,  in  ch.  xlii.,  vv.  10- 17, 
and  in  ch.  lix.  16-19.  These  three  sections,  ch.  Ix., 
chs.  Ixi.-lxii.  and  ch.  Ixiii.  1-7,  we  will  take  together  in 
this  chapter  of  our  volume. 

I.  Arise,  Shine  (ch.  Ix.) 

The  Sixtieth  chapter  of  Isaiah  is  the  spiritual  counter- 
part of  a  typical  Eastern  day,  with  the  dust  laid  and 
the  darts  taken  out  of  the  sunbeams, — a  typical  Eastern 
day  in  the  sudden  splendour  of  its  dawn,  the  com- 
pleteness and  apparent  permanence  of  its  noon,  the 
spaciousness  it  reveals  on  sea  and  land,  and  the  bar- 
baric profusion  of  life,  which  its  strong  light  is  sufficient 
to  flood  with  glory. 

Under  such  a  day  we  see  Jerusalem.  In  the  first 
five  verses  of  the  chapter,  she  is  addressed,  as  in  ch. 
liv.,  as  a  crushed  and  desolate  woman.  But  her  lonely 
night  is  over,  and  from  some  prophet  at  the  head  of 
her  returning  children  the  cry  peals.  Arise,  shine,  for 
come  hath  thy  light,  and  the  glory  of  Jehovah  hath  risen 
upon  thee.  In  the  East  the  sun  does  not  rise ;  the 
word  is  weak  for  an  arrival  almost  too  sudden  for 
twilight.  In  the  East  the  sun  leaps  above  the  horizon. 
You  do  not  feel  that  he  is  coming,  but  that  he  is  come. 
This  first  verse  is  suggested  by  the  swiftness  with 
which  he  bursts  upon  an  Eastern  city,  and  the  shrouded 
form  does  not,  as  in  our  twilight,  slowly  unwrap  itself, 
but  shines  at  once,  all  plates  and  points  of  glory.  Then 
the  figure  yields  :  for  Jerusalem  is  not  merely  one 
radiant  point  in  a  world  equally  lighted  by  the  sun,  but 


43°  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

is  herself  Jehovah's  unique  luminary.  For  behold  the 
darkness  shall  cover  the  earthy  and  gross  darkness  the 
peoples,  but  upon  thee  shall  Jehovah  arise,  and  His  glory 
upon  thee  shall  be  seen.  And  nations  shall  come  to  thy  light, 
and.  kings  to  the  brightness  of  thy  rising.  In  the  next  two 
verses  it  is  again  a  woman  who  is  addressed.  Lift  up 
thine  eyes  round  about  and  see,  all  of  them  have  gathered, 
have  come  to  thee :  thy  sons  from  afar  are  coming,  and  thy 
daughters  are  carried  in  the  arms.*  Then  follows  the 
fairest  verse  in  the  chapter.  Then  thou  shall  see  and  be 
radiant,  and  thy  heart  shall  throb  and  grow  large  ;  for 
there  shall  be  turned  upon  thee  the  seds  flood-tide,  and 
the  wealth  of  the  nations  shall  come  to  thee.  The  word 
which  the  Authorised  English  version  translated  shall 
flow  together,  and  our  Revised  Version  lightened,  means 
both  of  these.  It  is  liquid  hght, — light  that  ripples  and 
sparkles  and  runs  across  the  face ;  as  it  best  appears 
in  that  beautiful  passage  of  the  thirty-fourth  Psalm, 
they  looked  to  Him  and  their  faces  were  lightened.  Here 
it  suggests  the  light  which  a  face  catches  from  sparkling 
water.  The  prophet's  figure  has  changed.  The  stately 
mother  of  her  people  stands  not  among  the  ruins  of  her 
city,  but  upon  some  great  beach,  with  the  sea  in  front, 
— the  sea  that  casts  up  all  heaven's  light  upon  her  face 
and  drifts  all  earth's  wealth  to  her  feet,  and  her  eyes 
are  upon  the  horizon  with  the  hope  of  her  who  watches 
for  the  return  of  children. 

The  next  verses  are  simply  the  expansion  of  these 
two  clauses, — about  the  sea's  flood  and  the  wealth  of 
the  Nations.  Vv.  6-9  look  first  landward  and  then 
seaward,  as  from  Jerusalem's  own  wonderful  position 


*  Literally,  on   the  side  or  hip,   the  Eastern   method  of  carrying 
children. 


lx.-lxiii.  7.]  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  431 

on  the  high  ridge  between  Asia  and  the  sea :  between 
the  gates  of  the  East  and  the  gates  of  the  West.  On 
the  one  side,  the  city's  horizon  is  the  range  of  Moab  and 
Edom,  that  barrier,  in  Jewish  imagination,  of  the  hidden 
and  golden  East  across  which  pour  the  caravans  here 
pictured.  Profusion  of  camels  shall  cover  theCj  young 
camels  of  Midian  and  Ephah;  all  of  them  from  Sheba 
shall  come :  gold  and  frankincense  shall  they  bring,  and 
the  praises  of  Jehovah  shall  they  publish.  All  the  flocks 
of  Kedar  shall  be  gathered  to  thee,  the  rams  of  Nebaioth 
shall  minister  to  thee :  they  shall  come  up  with  acceptance 
on  Mine  altar,  and  the  house  of  My  glory  will  I  glorify. 
These  were  just  what  surged  over  Jordan  from  the 
far  countries  beyond,  of  which  the  Jews  knew  Uttle 
more  than  the  names  here  given, — tawny  droves  of 
camels  upon  the  greenness  of  Palestine  like  a  spate  of 
the  desert  from  which  they  poured;  rivers  of  sheep 
brimming  up  the  narrow  drove-roads  to  Jerusalem: — 
conceive  it  all  under  that  blazing  Eastern  sun.  But 
then  turning  to  Judah's  other  horizon,  marked  by  the 
yellow  fringe  of  sand  and  the  blue  haze  of  the  sea 
beyond,  the  prophet  cries  for  Jehovah  :  Who  are  these 
like  a  cloud  that  fly,  and  like  doves  to  their  windows? 
Surely  towards  Me  the  Isles  *  are  stretching,  and  ships  of 
Tarshish  in  the  van,  to  bring  thy  sons  from  afar,  their 
silver  and  their  gold  with  them,  to  the  Name  of  Jehovah 
of  Hosts  and  to  the  Holy  of  Israel,  for  He  hath  glorified 
thee.  The  poetry  of  the  Old  Testament  has  been  said 
to  be  deficient  in  its  treatment  of  the  sea  ;  and  certainly 
it  dwells  more  frequently,  as  was  natural  for  the  imagi- 
nation of  an  inland  and  a  highland  people  to  do,  upon 
the  hills.     But  in  what  literature  will  you  find  passages 

*  Or  coasts.     See  pp.  109  ff, 


432  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

of  equal  length  more  suggestive  of  the  sea  than  those 
short  pieces  in  which  the  Hebrew  prophet  sought  to 
render  the  futile  rage  of  the  world,  as  it  dashed  on  the 
steadfast  will  of  God,  by  the  roar  and  crash  of  the 
ocean  on  the  beach ;  *  or  painted  a  nation's  prosperity 
as  the  waves  of  a  summer  sea ;-[-  or  described  the  long 
coastlands  as  stretching  out  to  God,  and  the  white- 
sailed  ships  coming  up  the  horizon  like  doves  to  their 
windows  ! 

The  rest  of  the  chapter,  from  ver.  lO  onwards,  is  occu- 
pied with  the  rebuilding  and  adornment  of  Jerusalem, 
and  with  the  establishment  of  the  people  in  righteous- 
ness and  peace.  There  is  a  very  obvious  mingling  of 
the  material  and  the  moral.  The  Gentiles  are  to  be- 
come subject  to  the  Jew,  but  it  is  to  be  a  voluntary 
submission  before  the  evidence  of  Jerusalem's  spiritual 
superiority.  Nothing  is  said  of  a  Messiah  or  a  King. 
Jerusalem  is  to  be  a  commonwealth  ;  and,  while  her 
magistracy  shall  be  Peace  and  her  overseers  Righteous- 
ness, God  Himself,  in  evident  presence,  is  to  be  her 
light  and  glory.  Thus  the  chapter  ends  with  God  and 
the  People,  and  nothing  else.  God  for  an  everlasting 
light  around,  and  the  people  in  their  land,  righteous, 
secure  and  growing  very  large.  The  least  shall  become 
a  thousand,  and  the  smallest  a  strong  nation :  I  Jehovah 
will  hasten  it  in  its  time. 

This  chapter  has  been  put  through  many  interpreta- 
tions to  many  practical  uses: — to  describe  the  ingather- 
ing of  the  Gentiles  to  the  Church  (in  the  Christian  year 
it  is  the  Lesson  for  Epiphany),  to  prove  the  doctrine 
that  the  Church  should  live  by  the  endowment  of  the 

*  Isa.  xiv. ;  Isaiah  i.-x.xxix.,  pp.  281  ff. 
t  Isa.  xlviii.  18. 


Ix.-lxiii.  7.]  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  433 

kingdoms  of  this  world,  and  to  enforce  the  duty  of 
costliness  and  magnificence  in  the  public  worship  of 
God.  The  glory  of  the  Lebanon  shall  come  unto  thee,  fir- 
tree,  plane-tree  and  sherhin  together,  to  beautify  the  place 
of  My  sanctuary ,  and  I  will  make  the  place  of  My  feet 
glorious. 

The  last  of  these  duties  we  may  extend  and  qualify. 
If  the  coming  in  of  the  Gentiles  is  here  represented  as 
bringing  wealth  to  the  Church,  we  cannot  help  remem- 
bering that  the  going  out  to  the  Gentiles,  in  order  to 
bring  them  in,  means  for  us  the  spending  of  our  wealth 
on  things  other  than  the  adornment  of  temples;  and  that, 
besides  the  heathen,  there  are  poor  and  suffering  ones 
for  whom  God  asks  men's  gold,  as  He  asked  it  in  olden 
days  for  the  temple,  that  He  may  be  glorified.  Take 
that  last  phrase  : — And — with  all  that  material  wealth 
which  has  flowed  in  from  Lebanon,  from  Midian, 
from  Sheba — /  will  make  the  place  of  My  feet  glorious. 
When  this  singular  name  was  first  uttered  it  was 
limited  to  the  dwelling-place  of  the  Ark  and  Presence 
of  God,  visible  only  on  Mount  Zion.  But  when  God 
became  m^an,  and  did  indeed  tread  with  human  feet 
this  world  of  ours,  what  were  then  the  places  of  His 
feet?  Sometimes,  it  is  true,  the  Temple,  but  only 
sometimes  ;  far  more  often  where  the  sick  lay,  and  the 
bereaved  were  weeping, — the  pool  of  Bethesda,  the 
death-room  of  Jairus'  daughter,  the  way  to  the  centu- 
rion's sick  servant,  the  city  gateways  jvhere  the  beggars 
stood,  the  lanes  where  the  village  folk  had  gathered, 
against  His  coming,  their  deaf  and  dumb,  their  palsied 
and  lunatic.  These  were  the  places  of  His  feet,  who 
Himself  bare  our  sicknesses  and  carried  our  infirmities  ; 
and  these  are  what  He  would  seek  our  wealth  to  make 
glorious.     They  say  that  the  reverence  of  men  builds 

VOL.    II.  28 


434  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

now  no  cathedrals  as  of  old  ;  nay,  but  the  love  of  man, 
that  Christ  taught,  builds  far  more  of  those  refuges 
and  houses  of  healing,  scatters  far  more  widely  those 
medicines  for  the  body,  those  instruments  of  teaching, 
those  means  of  grace,  in  which  God  is  as  much  glorified 
as  in  Jewish  Temple  or  Christian  Cathedral. 

Nevertheless  He,  who  set  the  place  of  His  feet,  which 
He  would  have  us  to  glorify,  among  the  poor  and  the 
sick,  was  He,  who  also  did  not  for  Himself  refuse  that 
alabaster  box  and  that  precious  ointment,  which  might 
have  been  sold  for  much  and  given  to  the  poor.  The 
worship  of  God,  if  v^e  read  Scripture  aright,  ought  to  be 
more  than  merely  grave  and  comely.  There  should 
be  heartiness  and  lavishness  about  it, — profusion  and 
brilliance.  Not  of  material  gifts  alone  or  chiefly,  gold 
incense  or  rare  wood,  but  of  human  faculties,  graces 
and  feeling  ;  of  joy  and  music  and  the  sense  of  beauty. 
Take  this  chapter.  It  is  wonderful,  not  so  much  for  the 
material  wealth  which  it  devotes  to  the  service  of  God's 
house,  and  which  is  all  that  many  eyes  ever  see  in  it,  as 
for  the  glorious  imagination  and  heart  for  the  beautiful, 
the  joy  in  light  and  space  and  splendour,  the  poetry  and 
the  music,  which  use  those  material  things  simply  as 
the  light  uses  the  wick,  or  as  music  uses  the  lyre,  to 
express  and  reveal  itself.  What  a  call  this  chapter  is 
to  let  out  the  natural  wonder  and  poetry  of  the  heart, 
its  feeling  and  music  and  exultation, — all  that  is  within 
us,  as  the  Psalmist*  says, — in  the  Service  of  God.  Why 
do  we  not  do  so  ?  '  The  answer  is  very  simple.  Because, 
unlike  this  prophet,  we  do  not  realise  how  present  and 
full  our  salvation  is;  because,  unhke  him,  we  do  not 
realise  that  our  light  has  come,  and  so  we  will  not  arise 
and  shine. 


lx.-lxiii.  7.]  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  435 

II.  The  Gospel  (chs.  Ixi.-lxii.) 

The  speaker  in  ch,  Ixi.  is  not  introduced  by  name. 
Therefore  he  may  be  the  Prophet  himself,  or  he  may 
be  the  Servant.  The  present  expositor,  while  feeling 
that  the  evidence  is  not  conclusive  against  either  of 
these,  and  that  the  uncertainty  is  as  great  as  in 
ch.  xlviii.  16,*  inclines  to  think  that  there  is,  on  the 
whole,  less  objection  to  its  being  the  prophet  who 
speaks  than  to  its  being  the  Servant.  See  the  ap- 
pended note.  But  it  is  not  a  very  important  question, 
which  is  intended,  for  the  Servant  was  representative  of 

*  See  p.  210,  note.  Some  points  of  the  speaker's  description  of 
himself — for  example,  the  gift  of  the  Spirit  and  the  anointing — suit 
equally  well  any  prophet,  or  the  unique  Servant.  The  lofty  mission 
and  its  great  results  are  not  too  lofty  or  great  for  our  prophet,  for 
Jeremiah  received  his  office  in  terms  as  large.  That  the  prophet  has 
not  yet  spoken  at  such  length  in  his  own  person  is  no  reason  why  he 
should  not  do  so  now,  especially  as  this  is  an  occasion  on  which  he 
sums  up  and  enforces  the  whole  range  of  prophecy.  It  can,  therefore 
very  well  be  the  prophet  who  speaks.  On  the  other  hand,  to  say 
with  Diestel  that  it  cannot  be  the  Servant  because  the  personification 
of  the  Servant  ceases  with  ch.  liii.  is  to  beg  the  question.  A  stronger 
argument  against  the  case  for  the  Servant  is  that  the  speaker  does  not 
call  himself  by  that  name,  as  he  does  in  other  passages  when  he  is 
introduced;  but  this  is  not  conclusive,  for  in  1.  4-9  the  Servant, 
though  he  speaks,  does  not  name  himself.  To  these  may  be  added 
this  (from  Kriiger),  that  the  Servant's  discourse  never  passes  without 
transition  into  that  of  God,  as  this  speaker's  in  ver.  8,  but  the  prophet's 
discourse  often  so  passes;  and  this,  that  1^3,  N"lp,  and  Qnj  are  often 
used  of  the  prophet,  and  not  at  all  of  the  Servant.  These  are  all  the 
points  in  the  question,  and  it  will  be  seen  how  inconclusive  they  are. 
If  any  further  proof  of  this  were  required,  it  would  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  authorities  are  equally  divided.  There  hold  for  the  Servant 
Calvin,  Delitzsch,  Cheyne  (who  previously  took  the  other  view), 
Driver,  Briggs,  Nagelsbach  and  Orelli.  But  the  Targums,  Ewald, 
Hitzig,  Diestel,  Dillmann,  Bredenkamp  and  Kriiger  hold  by  the 
prophet.  Kriiger's  reasons,  Essai  sur  la  Theologie  d'Isaie  xl.-lxvi., 
p.  76,  are  specially  worthy  of  attention. 


436  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

prophecy ;  and  if  it  be  the  prophet  who  speaks  here,  he 
also  speaks  with  the  conscience  of  the  whole  function 
and  aim  of  the  prophetic  order.  That  Jesus  Christ 
fulfilled  this  programme  does  not  decide  the  question 
one  way  or  the  other ;  for  a  prophet  so  representative 
was  as  much  the  antetype  and  foreshadowing  of  Christ 
as  the  Servant  himself  was.  On  the  whole,  then,  we 
must  be  content  to  feel  about  this  passage,  what  we 
must  have  already  felt  about  many  others  in  our  pro- 
phecy, that  the  writer  is  more  anxious  to  place  before 
us  the  whole  range  and  ideal  of  the  prophetic  gift  than^ 
to  make  clear  in  whom  this  ideal  is  realised;  and  for 
the  rest  Jesus  of  Nazareth  so  plainly  fulfilled  it,  that  it 
becomes,  indeed,  a  very  minor  question  to  ask  whom  the 
writer  may  have  intended  as  its  first  application. 

If  ch.  Ix.  showed  us  the  external  glory  of  God's 
people,  ch.  Ixi.  opens  with  the  programme  of  their  inner  , 
mission.  There  we  had  the  building  and  adornment 
of  the  Temple,  that  Jehovah  might  glorify  His  people : 
here  we  have  the  binding  of  broken  hearts  and  the 
beautifying  of  soiled  lives,  that  Jehovah  may  be  glorified. 
But  this  inner  mission  also  issues  in  external  splendour, 
in  a  righteousness,  which  is  like  the  adornment  of  a 
bride  and  like  the  beauty  of  spring. 

The  commission  of  the  prophet  is  mainly  to  duties 
we  have  already  studied  in  preceding  passages,  both  on 
himself  and  on  the  Servant.  It  will  be  enough  to  point 
out  its  special  characteristics.  The  Spirit  of  my  Lord 
Jehovah  is  upon  me,  for  that  Jehovah  hath  anointed  me 
to  bring  good  tidings  to  the  afflicted ;  He  hath  sent  me 
to  bind  up  the  broken-hearted,  to  proclaim  to  the  captive 
liberty y  and  to  the  prisoners  open  ways ;  *  to  proclaim  an 

*  Literally,  opening;  but  the  word  is  always  used  of  opening  of  the 
eyes.     Ewald  renders  open  air,  Dillmann  hellen  Blick. 


lx.-lxiii.  7.]  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  437 

acceptable  year  for  Jehovah^  and  a  day  of  vengeance 
for  our  God;  to  comfort  all  that  mourn;  to  offer  to 
the  mourners  of  Zion,  to  give  unto  them  a  crest  *  for 
ashes,  the  oil  of  joy  for  mourning,  the  mantle  of  praise 
for  the  spirit  of  dimness ;  f  so  that  men  may  call  them 
Oaks-of-Rightcousness,  the  planting  of  Jehovah,  that  He 
may  break  into  glory. 

There  are  heard  here  all  the  keynotes  of  our  prophet,  "^ 
and  clear,  too,  is  that  usual  and  favourite  direction  of  his 
thoughts  from  the  inner  and  spiritual  influences  to  the 
outward  splendour  and  evidence,  the  passage  from  the 
comfort  and  healing  of  the  heart  to  the  rich  garment, 
the  renown,  and  his  own  dearest  vision  of  great  forest 
trees, — in  short,  Jehovah  Himself  breaking  into  glory. 
But  one  point  needs  special  attention. 

The  prophet  begins  his  commission  by  these  words, 
to  bring  good  tidings  to  the  afflicted,  and  again  says, 
to  proclaim  to  the  captive.  The  afflicted,  or  the  poor,  as 
it  is  mostly  rendered,  is  the  classical  name  for  God's 
people  in  Exile.  We  have  sufficiently  moved  among 
this  people  to  know  for  what  reason  the  bringing  of  good  i 
tidings  should  here  be  reckoned  as  the  first  and  most 
indispensable  service  that  prophecy  could  render  them. 
Why,  in  the  life  of  every  nation,  there  are  hours,  when 
the  factors  of  destiny,  that  loom  largest  at  other  times, 
are  dwarfed  and  dwindle  before  the  momentousness  of 
a  piece  of  news, — hours,  when  the  nation's  attitude  in  a 
great  moral  issue,  or  her  whole  freedom  and  destiny, 
are  determined  by  telegrams  from  the  seat  of  war.  The 
simultaneous  news  of  Grant's  capture  of  Vicksburg  and 
Meade's  defeat  of  Lee,  news  that  finally  turned  English 
opinion,  so  long  shamefully  debating  and  wavering,  to 

*  Any  insignia  or  ornament  for  the  head. 
■j"  They  same  word  as  in  xlii.  3,  fading  wick. 


438  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

the  side  of  God  and  the  slave  ;  the  telegrams  from  the 
army,  for  which  silent  crowds  waited  in  the  Berlin 
squares  through  the  autumn  nights  of  1870,  conscious 
that  the  unity  and  birthright  of  Germany  hung  upon 
the  tidings, — are  instances  of  the  vital  and  paramount 
influence  in  a  nation's  history  of  a  piece  of  news.  The 
force  of  a  great  debate  in  Parliament,  the  expression  of 
public  opinion  through  all  its  organs,  the  voice  of  a 
people  in  a  general  election,  things  in  their  time  as 
ominous  as  the  Fates,  all  yield  at  certain  supreme 
moments  to  the  meaning  of  a  simple  message  from 
Providence.  Now  it  was  for  liews  from  God  that  Israel 
waited  in  Exile ;  for  good  tidings  and  the  proclamation 

/of  fact.  They  had  with  them  a  Divine  Law,  but  no 
mere  exposition  of  it  could  satisfy  men  who  were 
captives  and  waited  for  the  command  of  their  freedom. 
They  had  with  them  Psalms,  but  no  beauty  of  music 
could  console  them  :  How  should  we  sing  the  Lord^s 
song  in  a  strange  land?  They  had  Prophecy,  wi^th  its 
assurance  of  the  love  and  the  power  of  their  God ;  and 
much  as  there  was  in  it  to  help  them  to  patience  and 
to  hope,  general  statements  were  not  enough  for  them. 
They  needed  the  testimony  of  a  fact.  Freedom  and 
Restoration  had  been  promised  them  :  they  waited  for 
the  proclamation  that  it  was  coming,  for  the  good 
news  that  it  had  arrived.     Now  our  prophecy  is  mainly 

vthis  proclamation  and  good  news  of  fact.  The  prophet 
uses  before  all  other  words  two, — to  call  or  proclaim,  kara, 
and  to  tell  good  tidings,  bisser.  We  found  them  in  his 
opening  chapter  :  we  find  them  again  here  when  he 
sums  up  his  mission.  A  third  goes  along  with  them, 
to  comfort,  naham,  but  it  is  the  accompaniment,  and 
they  are  the  burden,  of  his  prophecy. 

But  good    tidings   and  the  proclamation   meant    so 


Ix.-lxiii.  7.]  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  439 

much  more  than  the  mere  poHtical  deliverance  of  Israel 
— meant  the  fact  of  their  pardon,  the  tale  of  their 
God's  love,  of  His  provision  for  them,  and  of  His 
wonderful  passion  and  triumph  of  salvation  on  their 
behalf — that  it  is  no  wonder  that  these  two  words  came 
to  be  ever  afterwards  the  classical  terms  for  all  speech 
and  prophecy  from  God  to  man.  We  actually  owe  the 
Greek  words  of  the  New  Testament  for  gospel  and 
preaching  to  this  time  of  Israel's  history.  The  Greek 
term,  from  which  we  have  evangel,  evangelist  and  evan- 
gelise, originally  meant  good  news,  but  was  first  employed 
in  a  religious  sense  in  the  Greek  translation  of  our 
prophecy.  And  our  word  "  preach  "  is  the  heir,  though 
not  the  lineal  descendant,  through  the  Latin  prcedicare 
and  the  Greek  /crjpvaoreLV,  of  the  word,  which  is  translated 
in  ch.  Ix.  of  our  prophet  to  proclaim,  but  in  ch.  xl.  to 
call  or  cry.  It  is  to  the  Exile  that  we  trace  the  esta- 
blishment among  God's  people  of  regular  preaching  side 
by  side  with  sacramental  and  liturgical  worship ;  for  it 
was  in  the  Exile  that  the  Synagogue  arose,  whose  pulpit 
was  to  become  as  much  the  centre  of  Israel's  life  as  was 
the  altar  of  the  Temple.  And  it  was  from  the  pulpit 
of  a  synagogue  centuries  after,  when  the  preaching  had 
become  dry  exposition  or  hard  lawgiving,  that  Jesus 
re-read  our  prophecy  and  affirmed  again  the  good  news 
of  God. 

What  is  true  of  nations  is  true  of  individuals.  We 
indeed  support  our  hfe  by  principles;  we  develop  it 
by  argument ; — we  cannot  lay  too  heavy  stress  upon 
philosophy  and  law.  But  there  is  something  of  far 
greater  concern  than  either  argument  or  the  abstract 
principles  from  which  it  is  developed ;  something  that 
our  reason  cannot  find  of  itself,  that  our  conscience  but 
increases  our  longing  for.     It  is,  whether  certain  things 


446  THE  BOOK  OF  I3AIAH. 

are  facts  or  not ;  whether,  for  instance,  the  Supreme 
Power  of  the  Universe  is  on  the  side  of  the  individual 
combatant  for  righteousness ;  whether  God  is  love ; 
whether  Sin  has  been  forgiven ;  whether  Sin  and 
Death  have  ever  been  conquered  ;  whether  the  summer 
has  come  in  which  humanity  may  put  forth  their  shoots 
conscious  that  all  the  influence  of  heaven  is  on  their 
side,  or  whether,  there  being  no  heavenly  favours, 
man  must  train  his  virtue  and  coax  his  happiness  to 
ripen  behind  shelters  and  in  conservatories  of  his  own 
construction.  Now  Christ  comes  to  us  with  the  good 
news  of  God  that  it  is  so.  The  supreme  force  in  the 
Universe  is  on  man's  side,  and  for  man  has  won  victory 
and  achieved  freedom.  God  has  proclaimed  pardon. 
A  Saviour  has  overcome  sin  and  death.  We  are  free 
to  break  from  evil.  The  struggle  after  holiness  is  not 
the  struggle  of  a  weakly  plant  in  an  alien  soil  and 
beneath  a  wintry  sky,  counting  only  upon  the  pre- 
carious aids  of  human  cultivation  ;  but  summer  has 
come,  the  acceptable  year  of  the  Lord  has  begun,  and 
all  the  favour  of  the  Almighty  is  on  His  people's  side. 
These  are  the  good  tidings  and  proclamation  of  God,  and 
to  every  man  who  believes  them  they  must  make  an 
incalculable  difference  in  life. 

As  we  have  said,  the  prophet  passes  in  the  rest  of 
this  prophecy  from  the  spiritual  influences  of  his  mis- 
sion to  its  outward  effects.  The  people's  righteousness 
is  described  in  the  external  fashion,  which  we  have 
already  studied  in  Chapter  Fourteen;  Zion's  espousals  to 
Jehovah  are  celebrated,  but  into  that  we  have  also  gone 
thoroughly  (pp.  398  ff.)  ;  the  restoration  of  prophecy  in 
Jerusalem  is  described  (Ixii.  6-9),  as  in  ch.  lii.  8 ;  and 
another  call  is  given  to  depart  from  Babylon  and  every 
foreign  city  and  come  to  Zion.     This  call  coming  now, 


Ix.-lxiii.  7.]  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  441 

SO  long  after  the  last,  and  when  we  might  think  that 
the  prophet  had  wholly  left  Babylon  behind,  need  not 
surprise  us.  For  even  though  some  Jews  had  actually 
arrived  at  Zion,  which  is  not  certain,  others  were  hanging 
back  in  Babylon ;  and,  indeed,  such  a  call  as  this  might 
fitly  be  renewed  for  the  next  century  or  two  :  so  many 
of  God's  people  continued  to  forget  that  their  citizenship 
was  in  Zion. 

III.  The  Divine  Saviour  (ch.  Ixiii.   1-7). 

Once  again  the  prophet  turns  to  hail,  in  his  periodic 
transport,  the  Solitary  Divine  Hero  and  Saviour  of  His 
people. 

That  the  writer  of  this  piece  is  the  main  author  ol 
'*  Second  Isaiah  "  is  probable,  both  because  it  is  the 
custom  of  the  latter  to  describe  at  intervals  the  passion 
and  effort  of  Israel's  Mighty  One,  and  because  several 
of  his  well-known  phrases  meet  us  in  this  piece.  The 
speaker  in  righteousness  mighty  to  save  recalls  ch.  xlv. 
19-24 ;  and  the  day  of  vengeance  and  year  of  my  redeemed 
recalls  ch.  Ixi.  2  ;  and  /  looked^  and  there  was  no  helper^ 
and  I  gazed ^  and  there  was  none  to  uphold ,  recalls  lix.  16. 
The  prophet  is  looking  out  from  Jerusalem  towards 
Edom, — a  direction  in  which  the  watchmen  upon  Zion 
had  often  in  her  history  looked  for  the  return  of  her 
armies  from  the  punishment  of  Israel's  congenital  and 
perpetual  foe.  The  prophet,  however,  sees  the  prospect 
filled  up,  not  by  the  flashing  van  of  a  great  army,  but 
by  a  solitary  figure,  without  ally,  without  chariot,  with- 
out weapons,  swaying  on  in  the  wealth  of  his  strength. 
The  keynote  of  the  piece  is  the  loneliness  of  this  Hero. 
A  figure  is  used,  which,  where  battle  would  only  have 
suggested  complexity,  enthrals  us  with  the  spectacle  of 


442  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

solitary  effort, — the  figure  of  trampling  through  some 
vast  winefat  alone.  The  Avenging  Saviour  of  Israel 
has  a  fierce  joy  in  being  alone  :  it  is  his  new  nerve 
to  effort  and  victory, — therefore  mine  own  right  arm,  it 
brought  salvation  to  me.  We  see  One  great  form  in  the 
strength  of  one  great  emotion.    My  fury ^  it  upheld  me. 

The  interpretation  of  this  chapter  by  Christians  has 
been  very  varied,  and  often  very  perverse.  To  use 
the  words  of  Calvin,  "Violenter  torserunt  hoc  caput 
Christiani."  But,  as  he  sees  very  rightly,  it  is  not 
the  Messiah  nor  the  Servant  of  Jehovah,  who  is  here 
pictured,  but  Jehovah  Himself.  This  Solitary  is  the 
Divine  Saviour  of  Israel,  as  in  ch.  xlii.  7  f.  and  in 
ch.  lix.  i6f.  In  Chapter  Eight  of  this  volume  we  spoke 
so  fully  of  the  Passion  of  God,  that  we  may  now  refer 
to  that  chapter  for  the  essential  truth  which  underlies 
our  prophet's  anthropomorphism,  and  claims  our  worship 
where  a  short  sight  might  only  turn  the  heart  away  in 
scorn  at  the  savage  and  blood-stained  surface.  One  or 
two  other  points,  however,  demand  our  attention  before 
we  give  the  translation. 

Why  does  the  prophet  look  in  the  direction  of  Edom 
for  the  return  of  his  God  ?  Partly,  it  is  to  be  pre- 
sumed, because  Edom  was  as  good  a  representative 
as  he  could  choose  of  the  enemies  of  Israel  other  than 
Babylon.*  But  also  partly,  perhaps,  because  of  the 
names  which  match  the  red  colours  of  his  piece, — the 
wine  and  the  blood.  Edom  means  red,  and  Bossrah  is 
assonant  to  Bosser,  a  vinedresser. ^     Fitter  background 


*  See  Isaiah  i.-xxxix.,  pp.  438-40. 

f  Cf.  Kriiger,  Essai  sur  la  Theologie  d'Isaie  xl.-lxvi.,  pp.  I54-S5* 
Lagarde  has  proposed  to  read  D'INtp,  past  participle,  for  D"l^p  and 
n^ap  for  nnVSP-  '^^o  ^^  ^^^^  *^<^*  cometh  dyed  red,  redder  in  his 
garments  than  a  vinedresser  ? 


Ix.-lxiii.  7.  SALVATION  IN  SIGHT.  443 

and  scenery  the  prophet,  therefore,  could  not  have  for 
his  drama  of  Divine  Vengeance.  But  we  must  take 
care,  as  Dillmann  properly  remarks,  not  to  imagine  that 
any  definite,  historical  invasion  of  Edom  by  Israel,  or 
other  chastening  instrument  of  Jehovah,  is  here  in- 
tended. It  is  a  vision  v^^hich  the  prophet  sees  of  Jehovah 
Himself :  it  illustrates  the  passion,  the  agony,  the 
unshared  and  unaided  effort  which  the  Divine  Saviour 
passes  through  for  His  people. 

Further,  it  is  only  necessary  to  point  out,  that  the 
term  in  ver.  i  given  as  splendid  by  the  Authorised 
Version,  which  I  have  rendered  sweeping^  is  literally 
swelling,  and  is,  perhaps,  best  rendered  by  sailing  on 
or  swinging  on.  The  other  verb  which  the  Revised 
Version  renders  marching  means  swaying,  or  moving 
the  head  or  body  from  one  side  to  another,  in  the  pride 
and  fulness  of  strength.  In  ver.  2  like  a  wine-treader 
is  literally  like  him  that  treadeth  in  the  pressing-house 
— Geth  (the  first  syllable  of  Gethsemane,  the  oil-press). 
But  m  1  in  ver.  3  is  th&  pressing- trough. 

Who  is  this  coming  from  Edom^ 
Raw-red  his  garments  from  Bossrah  I 
This  sweeping  on  in  his  raiment, 
Swaying  in  the  wealth  of  his  strength  ? 

I  that  do  speak  in  righteousness^ 
Mighty  to  save  / 

Wherefore  is  red  on  thy  raiment^ 

And  thy  garments  like  to  a  wine-treadet's  ? 

A  trough  I  have  trodden  alone, 
Of  the  peoples  no  man  was  with  me. 


444  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

So  I  trod  them  down  in  my  wrath, 

And  trampled  them  down  in  my  fury; 

Their  life-blood  sprinkled  my  garments^ 

And  all  my  raiment  I  stained. 

For  the  day  of  revenge  in  my  heart, 

And  the  year  of  my  redeemed  has  come. 

And  I  looked,  and  no  helper; 

I  gazed,  and  none  to  uphold  ! 

So  my  righteousness  won  me  salvation; 

And  my  fury,  it  hath  upheld  me. 

So  I  stamp  on  the  peoples  in  my  wrathy 

And  make  them  drunk  with  my  fury. 

And  bring  down  to  earth  their  life-blood* 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  THE  JUDGEMENT, 
Isaiah  Ixiii.  ^-Ixvi. 

WE  might  well  have  thought,  that  with  the  section 
we  have  been  considering  the  prophecy  of 
Israel's  Redemption  had  reached  its  summit  and  its  end. 
The  glory  of  Zion  in  sight,  the  full  programme  of 
prophecy  owned,  the  arrival  of  the  Divine  Saviour 
hailed  in  the  urgency  of  His  feeling  for  His  people,  in  the 
sufficiency  of  His  might  to  save  them, — what  more,  we 
ask,  can  the  prophecy  have  to  give  us  ?  Why  does  it 
not  end  upon  these  high  notes  ?  The  answer  is,  the 
salvation  is  indeed  consummate,  but  the  people  are  not 
ready  for  it.  On  an  earlier  occasion,  let  us  remember, 
when  our  prophet  called  the  nation  to  their  Service  of 
God,  he  called  at  first  the  whole  nation,  but  had  then 
immediately  to  make  a  distinction.  Seen  in  the  light  of 
their  destiny,  the  mass  of  Israel  proved  to  be  unworthy  ; 
tried  by  its  strain,  part  immediately  fell  away.  But 
what  happened  upon  that  call  to  Service  happens  again 
upon  this  disclosure  of  Salvation.  The  prophet  realises 
that  it  is  only  a  part  of  Israel  who  are  worthy  of  it.  He 
feels  again  the  weight,  which  has  been  the  hindrance  of 
his  hope  all  through, — the  weight  of  the  mass  of  the 
nation,  sunk  in  idolatry  and  wickedness,  incapable  of 
appreciating  the  promises.    He  will  make  one  more  effort 


446  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

to  save  them — to  save  them  all.  He  does  this  in  an 
intercessory  prayer,  ch.  Ixiii.  7-lxiv.,  in  which  he  states 
the  most  hopeless  aspects  of  his  people's  case,  identifies 
himself  with  their  sin,  and  yet  pleads  by  the  ancient 
power  of  God  that  we  all  may  be  saved.  He  gets  his 
answer  in  ch.  Ixv.,  in  which  God  sharply  divides  Israel 
into  two  classes,  the  faithful  and  the  idolaters,  and 
affirms  that,  while  the  nation  shall  be  saved  for  the 
sake  of  the  faithful  remnant,  Jehovah's  faithful  servants 
and  the  unfaithful  can  never  share  the  same  experience 
or  the  same  fate.  And  then  the  book  closes  with  a 
discourse  in  ch.  Ixvi.,  in  which  this  division  between 
the  two  classes  in  Israel  is  pursued  to  a  last  terrible 
emphasis  and  contrast  upon  the  narrow  stage  of  Jeru- 
salem itself.  We  are  left,  not  with  the  realisation  of 
the  prophet's  prayer  for  the  salvation  of  all  the  nations, 
but  with  a  last  judgement  separating  its  godly  and 
ungodly  portions. 

Thus  there  are  three  connected  divisions  in  Ixiii.  7- 
Ixvi.  First,  the  prophet's  Intercessory  Prayer,  ch.  Ixiii. 
7-lxiv.  ;  second,  the  Answer  of  Jehovah,  ch.  Ixv. ;  and 
third,  the  Final  Discourse  and  Judgement,  ch.  Ixvi. 

I.  The  Prayer  for  the  Whole  People 
(ch.  ixiii.  7-lxiv.). 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  discussion  as  to  both  the  date 
and  the  authorship  of  this  piece, — as  to  whether  it  comes 
from  the  early  or  the  late  Exile,  and  as  to  whether  it 
comes  from  our  prophet  or  from  another.  It  must  have 
been  written  after  the  destruction  and  before  the  rebuild- 
ing of  the  Temple  ;  this  is  put  past  all  doubt  by  these 
verses  :  Thy  holy  people  possessed  it  but  a  little  while  : 
our  adversaries  have  trodden  down  Thy  sanctuary.     Thy 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]^  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  447 

holy  cities  are  become  a  wilderness,  Zion  has  become  a 
wildernesSy  Jerusalem  a  desolation.  The  house  of  our 
holiness  and  of  our  ornament,  wherein  our  fathers  praised 
Thee,  is  become  for  a  burning  of  fire,  and  all  our  delights 
are  for  ruin.* 

This  language  has  been  held  to  imply  that  the  disaster 
to  Jerusalem  was  recent,  as  if  the  city's  confla-^ration 
still  flared  on  the  national  imagination,  which  in  later 
years  of  the  Exile  was  impressed  rather  by  the  long,  cold 
ruins  of  the  Holy  Place,  the  haunt  of  wild  beasts.  But 
not  only  is  this  point  inconclusive,  but  the  impression 
that  it  leaves  is  entirely  dispelled  by  other  verses,  which 
speak  of  the  Divine  anger  as  having  been  of  long  con- 
tinuance, and  as  if  it  had  only  hardened  the  people 
in  sin;  compare  ch.  Ixiii.  17  and  Ixiv.  6,  7.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  prayer  to  show  that  the  author  lived  in 
exile,  and  accordingly  the  proposal  has  been  made  to 
date  the  piece  from  among  the  first  attempts  at  rebuild- 
ing after  the  Return.  To  the  present  expositor  this 
seems  to  be  certainly  wrong.  The  man  who  wrote 
vv.  11-15  of  ch.  Ixiii.  had  surely  the  Return  still  before 
him  ;  he  would  not  have  written  in  the  way  he  has  done 
of  the  Exodus  from  Egypt  unless  he  had  been  feeling 
the  need  of  another  exhibition  of  Divine  Power  of  the 
same  kind.  The  prayer,  therefore,  must  come  from 
pretty  much  the  same  date  as  the  rest  of  our  prophecy, 
— after  the  Exile  had  long  continued,  but  while  the 
Return  had  not  yet  taken  place.  Nor  is  there  any 
reason  against  attributing  it  to  the  same  writer.  It  is 
true  the  style  differs  from  the  rest  of  his  work,  but  this 
may  be  accounted  for,  as  in  the  case  of  ch.  liii.,  by  the 

*  Ch.  Ixiii.  18  and  Ixiv.  10,  1 1.     In  the  Hebrew  ch.  Ixiv.  begins  a 
verse  later  than  it  does  in  the  EngUsh  version 


448  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

change  of  subject.  Most  critics,  who  hold  that  we  still 
follow  the  same  author,  take  for  granted  that  some  time 
has  elapsed  since  the  prophet's  triumphant  strains  in 
chs.  Ix.-lxii.  This  is  probable  ;  but  there  is  nothing  to 
make  it  certain.  What  is  certain  is  the  change  of  mood 
and  conscience.  The  prophet,  who  in  ch.  Ix.  had  been 
caught  away  into  the  glorious  future  of  the  people,  is 
here  as  utterly  absorbed  in  their  barren  and  doubtful 
present.  Although  the  salvation  is  certain,  as  he  has 
seen  it,  the  people  are  not  ready.  The  fact  he  has 
already  felt  so  keenly  about  them, — see  ch.  xlii.,  vv.  24, 
25, — that  their  long  discipline  in  exile  has  done  the 
mass  of  them  no  good,  but  evil,  comes  forcibly  back  upon 
him  (ch.  Ixiv.  ^b  ff.).  Thou  wast  angry,  and  we  sinned 
only  the  more :  in  such  a  state  we  have  been  long, 
and  shall  we  be  saved !  The  banished  people  are 
thoroughly  unclean  and  rotten,  fading  as  a  leaf,  the 
sport  of  the  wind.  But  the  prophet  identifies  himself 
with  them.  He  speaks  of  their  sin  as  ours,  of  their 
misery  as  ours.  He  takes  of  them  the  very  saddest 
view  possible,  he  feels  them  all  as  sheer  dead  weight : 
there  is  none  that  calleth  on  Thy  name,  that  stirreth  him- 
self up  to  take  hold  on.  Thee  :  for  Thou  hast  hid  Thy  face 
from  us,  and  delivered  us  into  the  power  of  our  iniquities. 
But  the  prophet  thus  loads  himself  with  the  people  in 
order  to  secure,  if  he  can,  their  redemption  as  a  whole. 
Twice  he  says  in  the  name  of  them  all.  Doubtless  Thou 
art  our  Father.  His  great  heart  will  not  have  one  of 
them  left  out ;  we  all,  he  says,  are  the  work  of  Thy  hand, 
we  all  are  Thy  people. 

But  this  intention  of  the  prayer  will  amply  account 
for  any  change  of  style  we  may  perceive  in  the  language. 
No  one  will  deny  that  it  is  quite  possible  for  the  same 
man  now  to  fling  himself  forward  into  the  glorious  vision 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  449 

of  his  people's  future  salvation,  and  again  to  identify 
himself  with  the  most  hopeless  aspects  of  their  present 
distress  and  sin ;  and  no  one  will  deny  that  the  same 
man  will  certainly  write  in  two  different  styles  with 
regard  to  each  of  these  different  feelings.  Besides 
which,  we  have  seen  in  the  passage  the  recurrence  of 
some  of  our  prophecy's  most  characteristic  thoughts. 
We  feel,  therefore,  no  reason  for  counting  the  passage 
to  be  by  another  hand  than  that  which  has  mainly 
written  "  Second  Isaiah."  It  may  be  at  once  admitted 
that  he  has  incorporated  in  it  earlier  phrases,  reminis- 
cences and  echoes  of  language  about  the  fall  of  Jerusalem 
in  use  when  the  Lamentations  were  written.  But  this 
was  a  natural  thing  for  him  to  do  in  a  prayer,  in  which 
he  represented  the  whole  people  and  took  upon  himself 
the  full  burden  of  their  woes. 

If  such  be  the  intention  of  chs.  Ixiii.  7-lxiv.,  then  in 
them  we  have  one  of  the  noblest  passages  of  our  prophet's 
great  work.  How  like  he  is  to  the  Servant  he  pictured 
for  us  !  How  his  great  heart  fulfils  the  loftiest  ideal  of 
Service  :  not  only  to  be  the  prophet  and  the  judge  of 
his  people,  but  to  make  himself  one  with  them  in  all 
their  sin  and  sorrow,  to  carry  them  all  in  his  heart. 
Truly,  as  his  last  words  said  of  the  Servant,  he  himself 
bears  the  sin  of  many,  and  interposes  for  the  transgressors. 
Before  we  see  the  answer  he  gets,  let  us  make  clear 
some  obscure  things  and  appreciate  some  beautiful  ones 
in  his  prayer. 

It  opens  with  a  recital  of  Jehovah's  ancient  loving- 
kindness  and  mercies  to  Israel.  This  is  what  perhaps 
gives  it  connection  with  the  previous  section.  In  ch. 
Ixii.  the  prophet,  though  sure  of  the  coming  glory,  wrote 
before  it  had  come,  and  urged  upon  the  Lord^s  remem- 
brancers to  keep  no  silence,  and  give  Him  no  silence  till  He 

VOL.   II.  29 


450  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

establish  and  till  He  make  Jerusalem  a  praise  in  the  earth. 
This  work  of  remembrancing,  the  prophet  himself  takes 
up  in  Ixiii.  7  :  The  lovingkindnesses  of  Jehovah  I  will 
record,  Hterally,  cause  to  be  remembered,  the  praises  of 
Jehovah,  according  to  all  that  Jehovah  hath  bestowed  upon 
us.  And  then  he  beautifully  puts  all  the  beginnings  of 
God's  dealings  with  His  people  in  His  trusting  of  them: 
For  He  said,  Surely  they  are  My  people,  children  that  will 
not  deal  falsely;  so  He  became  their  Saviour.  In  all  their 
affliction  He  was  afflicted,  the  Angel  of  His  Face  saved 
them.  This  must  be  understood,  not  as  an  angel  of  the 
Presence,  who  went  out  from  the  Presence  to  save  the 
people,  but,  as  it  is  in  other  Scriptures,  God's  own 
Presence,  God  Himself;  and  so  interpreted,  the  phrase 
falls  into  line  with  the  rest  of  the  verse,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  vivid  expressions  that  the  Bible  contains  of 
the  personality  of  God.*  In  His  love  and  in  His  pity  He 
redeemed  them,  and  bare  them,  and  carried  them  all  the  days 
of  old.  Then  he  tells  us  how  they  disappointed  and 
betrayed  this  trust,  ever  since  the  Exodus,  the  days  of 


*  Semites  had  a  horror  of  painting  the  Deity  in  any  form.  But 
when  God  had  to  be  imagined  or  described,  they  chose  the  form  of 
a  man  and  attributed  to  Him  human  features.  Chiefly  they  thought 
of  His  face.  To  see  His  face,  to  come  into  the  light  of  His  countenance, 
was  the  way  their  hearts  expressed  longing  for  the  living  God. 
Exod.  xxiii.  14;  Psalm  xxxi.  16,  xxxiv.  16,  Ixxx.  7.  But  among  the 
heathen  Semites  God's  face  was  separated  from  God  Himself,  and  wor- 
shipped as  a  separate  god.  In  heathen  Semitic  religions  there  are  a 
number  of  deities  who  are  the  faces  of  others.  But  the  Hebrew  writers, 
with  every  temptation  to  do  the  same,  maintained  their  monotheism, 
and  went  no  farther  than  to  speak  of  the  angel  of  God's  Face.  And  in 
all  the  beautiful  narratives  of  Genesis,  Exodus  and  Judges  about  the 
glorious  Presence  that  led  Israel  against  their  enemies,  the  angel 
of  God's  face  is  an  equivalent  of  God  Himself.  Jacob  said,  the  God 
which  hath  fed  me,  and  the  angel  which  hath  redeemed  me,  bless  the  lads. 
In  Judges  this  angel's  word  is  God's  Word. 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  451 

old.  But  they  rebelled  and  grieved  the  Spirit  of  His  holiness: 
therefore  He  was  turned  to  be  their  enemy,  He  Himself 
fought  against  them.  This  refers  to  their  history  down  to, 
and  especially  during,  the  Exile  :  compare  ch.  xlii.,  vv. 
24,  25.  Then  in  their  affiction  they  remembered  the  days 
of  old — the  English  version  obscures  the  sequence  here 
by  translating  he  remembered — and  then  follows  the 
glorious  account  of  the  Exodus.  In  ver.  1 3  the  wilderness 
is,  of  course,  prairie,  flat  pasture-land ;  they  were  led  as 
smoothly  as  a  horse  in  a  meadow,  that  they  stumbled  not. 
As  cattle  that  come  down  into  the  valley — cattle  coming 
down  from  the  hill  sides  to  pasture  and  rest  on  the  green, 
watered  plains — the  Spirit  of  Jehovah  caused  them  to  rest: 
so  didst  Thou  lead  Thy  people  to  make  Thyself  a  glorious 
name.  And  then  having  offered  such  precedents,  the 
prophet's  prayer  breaks  forth  to  a  God,  whom  His 
people  feel  no  longer  at  their  head,  but  far  withdrawn 
into  heaven  :  Look  down  from  heaven,  and  behold  from 
the  habitation  of  Thy  holiness  and  Thy  glory:  where  is  Thy 
zeal  and  Thy  mighty  deeds  ?  the  surge  of  Thy  bowels  and 
thy  compassions  are  restrained  towards  me.  Then  he 
pleads  God's  fatherhood  to  the  nation,  and  the  rest 
of  the  prayer  alternates  between  the  hopeless  misery 
and  undeserving  sin  of  the  people,  and,  notwithstanding, 
the  power  of  God  to  save  as  He  did  in  times  of  old ; 
the  willingness  of  God  to  meet  with  those  who  wait  for 
Him  and  remember  Him;  and,  once  more.  His  father- 
hood, and  His  power  over  them,  as  the  power  of  the 
potter  over  the  clay. 

Two  points  stand  out  from  the  rest.  The  Divine 
Trust,  from  which  all  God's  dealing  with  His  people  is 
said  to  have  started,  and  the  Divine  Fatherhood,  which 
the  prophet  pleads. 

He  said.  Surely  they  are  My  people,  children  that  will  not 


452  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

deal  falsely :  so  He  was  their  Saviour.  The  "  surely  "  is 
not  the  fiat  of  sovereignty  or  foreknowledge  :  it  is  the 
hope  and  confidence  of  love.  It  did  not  prevail ;  it  was 
disappointed. 

This  is,  of  course,  a  profound  acknowledgment  of 
man's  free  will.  It  is  implied  that  men's  conduct  must 
remain  an  uncertain  thing,  and  that  in  calling  men 
God  cannot  adventure  upon  greater  certainty  than  is  im- 
plied in  the  trust  of  affection.  If  one  asks,  What,  then, 
about  God's  foreknowledge,  who  alone  knoweth  the  end 
of  a  thing  from  the  beginning,  and  His  sovereign  grace, 
who  chooseth  whom  He  will  ?  are  you  not  logically 
bound  to  these  ? — then  it  can  only  be  asked  in  return. 
Is  it  not  better  to  be  without  logic  for  a  little,  if  at 
the  expense  of  it  we  obtain  so  true,  so  deep  a  glimpse 
into  God's  heart  as  this  simple  verse  affords  us  ? 
Which  is  better  for  us  to  know — that  God  is  Wisdom 
which  knows  all,  or  Love  that  dares  and  ventures  all  r 
Surely,  that  God  is  Love  which  dares  and  ventures  all 
with  the  worst,  with  the  most  hopeless  of  us.  This  is 
what  makes  this  single  verse  of  Scripture  more  powerful 
to  move  the  heart  than  all  creeds  and  catechisms.  For 
where  these  speak  of  sovereign  will,  and  often  mock 
our  affections  with  the  bare  and  heavy  (if  legitimate) 
sceptre  they  sway,  this  calls  forth  our  love,  honour  and 
obedience  by  the  heart  it  betrays  m  God.  Of  what 
unsuspicious  trust,  of  what  chivalrous  adventure  of 
love,  of  what  fatherly  confidence,  does  it  speak  !  What 
a  religion  is  this  of  ours  in  the  power  of  which  a  man 
may  every  morning  rise  and  feel  himself  thrilled  by  the 
thought  that  God  trusts  him  enough  to  work  with  His 
will  for  the  day ;  in  the  power  of  which  a  man  may 
look  round  and  see  the  sordid,  hopeless  human  life 
about  him  glorified  by  the  truth,  that  for  the  salvation  of 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  453 

such  God  did  adventure  Himself  in  a  love  that  laid 
itself  dov^rn  in  death.  The  attraction  and  power  of  such 
a  religion  can  never  die.  Requiring  no  painful  thought 
to  argue  it  into  reality,  it  leaps  to  light  before  the 
natural  affection  of  man's  heart ;  it  takes  his  instincts 
immediately  captive;  it  gives  him  a  conscience,  an 
honour  and  an  obligation.  No  wonder  that  our  prophet, 
having  such  a  belief,  should  once  more  identify  himself 
with  the  people,  and  adventure  himself  with  the  weight 
of  their  sin  before  God. 

The  other  point  of  the  prayer  is  the  Fatherhood  of 
God,  concerning  which  all  that  is  needful  to  say  here 
is  that  the  prophet,  true  to  the  rest  of  Old  Testament 
teaching  on  the  subject,  applies  it  only  to  God's  relation 
to  the  nation  as  a  whole.  In  the  Old  Testament  no  one 
is  called  the  son  of  God  except  Israel  as  a  people,  or 
some  individual  representative  and  head  of  Israel.  And 
even  of  such  the  term  was  seldom  employed.  This  was 
not  because  the  Hebrew  was  without  temptation  to 
imagine  his  physical  descent  from  the  gods,  for  neigh- 
bouring nations  indulged  in  such  dreams  for  themselves 
and  their  heroes  ;  nor  because  he  was  without  apprecia- 
tion of  the  intellectual  kinship  between  the  human  and 
the  Divine,  for  he  knew  that  in  the  beginning  God  had 
said,  Let  us  make  man  in  our  own  image.  But  the  same 
feeling  prevailed  with  him  in  regard  to  this  idea,  as  we 
have  seen  prevailed  in  regard  to  the  kindred  idea  of  God 
as  the  husband  of  His  people.*  The  prophets  were 
anxious  to  emphasize  that  it  was  a  moral  relation, — a 
moral  relation,  and  one  initiated  from  God's  side  by 
certain  historical  acts  of  His  free,  selecting,  redeeming 
and  adopting  love.     Israel  was  not  God's  son  till  God 

*  See  pp.  398  ff. 


454  THE  BOOK   OF  ISAIAH. 

had  evidently  called  and  redeemed  him.  Look  at  how 
our  prophet  uses  the  word  Father,  and  to  what  he  makes 
it  equivalent.  The  first  time  it  is  equivalent  to  Redeemer: 
Thou,  O  Loi'd,  art  our  Father ;  our  Redeemer  from  old  is 
Thy  name  (Ixiii.  i6/^).  The  second  time  it  is  illustrated 
by  the  work  of  the  potter :  But  now,  O  Lord,  Thou  art 
our  Father;  we  are  the  clay,  and  Thou  our  potter;  and  we 
are  all  the  work  of  Thy  hand  (Ixiv.  8).  Could  it  be 
made  plainer  in  what  sense  the  Bible  defines  this  rela- 
tion between  God  and  man  ?  It  is  not  a  physical,  nor 
is  it  an  intellectual  relation.  The  assurance  and  the 
virtue  of  it  do  not  come  to  men  with  their  blood  or 
with  the  birth  of  their  intellect,  but  in  the  course  of 
moral  experience,  with  the  sense  that  God  claims  them 
from  sin  and  from  the  world  for  Himself;  with  the 
gift  of  a  calling  and  a  destiny  ;  with  the  formation  of 
character,  the  perfecting  of  obedience,  the  growth  in 
His  knowledge  and  His  grace.  And  because  it  is  a 
moral  relation  time  is  needed  to  realise  it,  and  only 
after  long  patience  and  effort  may  it  be  unhesitatingly 
claimed.  And  that  is  why  Israel  was  so  long  in  claim- 
ing it,  and  why  the  clearest,  most  undoubting  cries  to 
God  the  Father,  v.hich  rise  from  the  Greek  in  the 
earliest  period  of  his  history,  reach  our  ears  from 
Jewish  lips  only  near  the  end  of  their  long  progress, 
only  (as  we  see  from  our  prayer)  in  a  time  of  trial  and 
affliction. 

We  have  a  New  Testament  echo  of  this  Old  Testa- 
ment belief  in  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  as  a  moral  and 
not  a  national  relation,  in  Paul's  writings,  who  in  the 
Second  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  (vi.  17,  18)  urges 
thus  :  Wherefore  come  out  from  among  them,  and  be  ye 
separate,  saith  the  Lord,  and  touch  not  the  unclean  thing; 
and  I  will  receive  you,  and  will  be  a  Father  unto  you, 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  455 

and  ye  shall  be  My  sons  and  daughters,  saith  the  Lord 
Almighty. 

On  these  grounds,  then, — that  God  in  His  great  love 
had  already  adventured  Himself  with  this  whole  people, 
and  already  by  historical  acts  of  election  and  redemp- 
tion proved  Himself  the  Father  of  the  nation  as  a  whole, 
— does  our  prophet  plead  with  Him  to  save  them  all  again. 
The  answer  to  this  pleading  he  gets  in  ch.  Ixv. 

II.  God's  Answer  to  the  Prophet's  Intercession 
(ch.  Ixv.). 

God's  answer  to  his  prophet's  intercession  is  twofold. 
First,  He  says  that  He  has  already  all  this  time  been 
trying  them  with  love,  meeting  them  with  salvation ; 
but  they  have  not  turned  to  Him.  The  prophet  has 
asked.  Where  is  Thy  zeal  ?  the  yearning  of  Thy  bowels  and 
Thy  compassions  are  restrained  towards  me.  Thou  hast 
hid  Thy  face  far  from  us.  Wilt  Thou  refrain  Thyself  for 
these  things,  O  Jehovah  ?  wilt  Thou  hold  Thy  peace  and 
afflict  us  very  sore.  And  now,  in  the  beginning  of 
ch.  Ixv.,  Jehovah  answers,  not  with  that  confusion  of 
tenses  and  irrelevancy  of  words  with  which  the  English 
version  makes  Him  speak ;  but  suitably,  relevantly  and 
convincingly.  /  have  been  to  be  inquired  of  those  who 
asked  not  for  Me.  I  have  been  to  be  found  of  them  that 
sought  Me  not.  I  have  been  saying,  I  am  here,  I  ant  here, 
to  a  nation  that  did  not  call  on  My  name.  I  have  stretched 
out  My  hands  all  the  day  to  a  people  turning  away,  who 
walk  in  a  way  that  is  not  good,  after  their  own  thoughts; 
a  people  that  have  been  provoking  Me  to  My  face  con- 
tinually,— and  then  He  details  their  idolatry.  This, 
then,  is  the  answer  of  the  Lord  to  the  prophet's 
appeal.     '*  In  this  I  have  not  all  power.     It  is  WTong  to 


456  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

talk  of  Me  as  the  potter  and  of  man  as  the  clay,  as  if 
all  the  active  share  in  salvation  lay  v^^ith  Me.  Man  is 
free, — free  to  withhold  himself  from  My  urgent  affec- 
tion ;  free  to  turn  from  My  outstretched  hands ;  free  to 
choose  before  Me  the  abomination  of  idolatry.  And 
this  the  mass  of  Israel  have  done,  clinging,  fanatical  and 
self-satisfied,  to  their  unclean  and  morbid  imaginations 
of  the  Divine,  all  the  time  that  My  great  prophecy  by 
you  has  been  appealing  to  them."  This  is  a  sufficient 
answer  to  the  prophet's  prayer.  Love  is  not  omnipo- 
tent ;  if  men  disregard  so  open  an  appeal  of  the  Love 
of  God,  they  are  hopeless  ;  nothing  else  can  save  them. 
The  sin  against  such  love  is  like  the  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost,  of  which  our  Lord  speaks  so  hopelessly.  Even 
God  cannot  help  the  despisers  and  abusers  of  Grace. 

The  rest  of  God's  answer  to  His  prophet's  interces- 
sion emphasizes  that  the  nation  shall  be  saved  for  the 
sake  of  a  faithful  remnant  in  it  (vv.  8-io).  But  the 
idolaters  shall  perish  (vv.  1 1,  12).  They  cannot  possibly 
expect  the  same  fare,  the  same  experience,  the  same 
fate,  as  God's  faithful  servants  (vv.  13-15).  But  those 
who  are  true  and  faithful  Israelites,  surviving  and  ex- 
periencing the  promised  salvation,  shall  find  that  God 
is  true,  and  shall  acknowledge  Him  as  the  God  of  Amen, 
because  the  former  troubles  are  forgotten — those  felt  so 
keenly  in  the  prophet's  prayer  in  ch.  Ixiv. — and  because 
they  are  hid  from  Mine  eyes.  The  rest  of  the  answer 
describes  a  state  of  serenity  and  happiness  wherein 
there  shall  be  no  premature  death,  nor  loss  of  property, 
nor  vain  labour,  nor  miscarriage,  nor  disappointment  of 
prayer  nor  delay  in  its  answer,  nor  strife  between  man 
and  the  beasts,  nor  any  hurt  or  harm  in  Jehovah's  Holy 
Mountain.  Truly  a  prospect  worthy  of  being  named  as 
the  prophet  names  it,  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  ! 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  457 

Ch.  Ixv.  is  thus  closely  connected,  both  by  circum- 
stance and  logic,  with  the  long  prayer  which  precedes  it. 
The  tendency  of  recent  criticism  has  been  to  deny  this 
connection,  especially  on  the  line  of  circumstance. 
Ch.  Ixv.  does  not,  it  is  argued,  reflect  the  Babylonish 
captivity  as  ch.  Ixiii.  /-Ixiv.  so  clearly  does;  but,  on 
the  contrary,  "while  some  passages  presuppose  the 
Exile  as  past,  others  refer  to  circumstances  characteristic 
of  Jewish  life  in  Canaan."*  But  this  view  is  only 
possible  through  straining  some  features  of  the  chaptej 
adaptable  either  to  Palestine  or  Babylon,  and  overlook- 
ing others  which  are  obviously  Babylonian.  Sacrificing 
in  gardens  and  burning  incense  on  tiles  were  practices 
pursued  in  Jerusalem  before  the  Exile,  but  the  latter 
was  introduced  there  from  Babylon,  and  the  former  was 
universal  in  heathendom.  The  practices  in  ver.  5  are 
never  attributed  to  the  people  before  the  Exile,  were  all 
possible  in  Babylonia,  and  some  we  know  to  have  been 
actual  there,  t  The  other  charge  of  idolatry  in  ver.  1 1 
"suits  Babylonia,"  Cheyne  admits,  "as  well  as  (pro- 
bably) Palestine."  X     But  what  seems  decisive  for  the 

*  Cheyne.  Similarly  Brcdenkamp,  who  contends  that  the  prophecy 
is  Isaianic,  and  to  be  dated  from  the  time  of  Manasseh. 

f  Cf.  Dillmann,  m  loco. 

\  Among  Orientals  the  planets  Jupiter  and  Venus  were  worshipped 
as  the  Larger  and  the  Lesser  Luck.  They  were  worshipped  as  Mero- 
dach  and  Istar  among  the  Babylonians.  Merodach  was  worshipped 
for  prosperity  {cj.  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  460,  476,  488).  It  may 
be  Merodach  and  Istar,  to  whom  are  here  given  the  name  Gad,  or 
Luck  (cf.  Genesis  xxii.  1 1,  and  the  name  Baal  Gad  in  the  Lebanon 
valley)  and  Meni,  or  Fate,  Fortune  {cf.  Arabic  al-manijjat,  fate  ;  Well- 
hausen,  Skizzen,  iii.,  22  fF.,  189.  There  was  in  the  Babylonian 
Pantheon  a  *'Manu  the  Great  who  presided  over  fate  "  (Lenormant, 
Chaldean  Magic y  etc.,  p.  i2o).  Instances  of  idolatrous  feasts  will  be 
found  in  Sayce,  op.  cit.,  p.  539;  cf.  I  Cor.  x.  21,  Ye  cannot  partake  of 
the  table  of  the  Lord  and  of  the  table  of  devils.  See  what  is  said  in 
p.  62  of  this  volume  about  the  connection  of  idolatry  and  commerce. 


458  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

exilic  origin  of  ch.  Ixv.  is  that  the  possession  of 
Judah  and  Zion  by  the  seed  of  Jacob  is  still  implied 
as  future  (ver.  9).  Moreover  the  holy  land  is  alluded 
to  by  the  name  common  among  the  exiles  in  flat 
Mesopotamia,  My  mountains,  and  in  contrast  with  the 
idolatry  of  which  the  present  generation  is  guilty  the 
idolatry  of  their  fathers  is  characterised  as  having 
been  upon  the  mountains  and  upon  the  hills,  and  again 
the  people  is  charged  With  forgetting  My  holy  mountain, 
a  phrase  reminiscent  of  Psalm  cxxxvii.,  ver.  4,  and 
more  appropriate  to  a  time  of  exile,  than  when  the 
people  were  gathered  about  Zion.  All  these  resem- 
blances in  circumstance  corroborate  the  strong  logical 
connection  which  we  have  found  between  ch.  ixiv.  and 
ch.  Ixv.,  and  leave  us  no  reason  for  taking  the  latter 
away  from  the  main  author  of  ''  Second  Isaiah,"  though 
he  may  have  worked  up  into  it  recollections  and  remains 
of  an  older  time. 


III.  The  Last  Judgement  (ch.  Ixvi.). 

Whether  with  the  final  chapter  of  our  prophecy  we 
at  last  get  footing  in  the  Holy  Land  is  doubtful.*  It 
was  said  on  p.  20  that,  "  in  vv.  i   to  4  of  this  chapter 

*  Bleek  (5th  ed.,  pp.  287,  288)  holds  ch.  Ixvi,  to  be  by  a  prophet 
who  lived  in  Palestine  after  the  resumption  of  sacrificial  worship 
(vv.  3,  6,  30),  that  is,  upon  the  altar  of  burnt-offering  which  the 
Returned  had  erected  there,  and  at  a  time  when  the  temple-building 
had  begun.  Vatke  also  holds  to  a  post-exilic  date,  Einleiiung  in  das 
^.r.,  pp.625, 630.  Kuenen,  too,  makes  the chapterpost-exilic.  Breden- 
kamp  takes  vv.  1-6  for  Palestinian,  but  pre-exilic,  and  ascribes  them 
to  Isaiah.  With  ver.  I  he  compares  I  Kings  viii,  27  ;  and  as  to 
ver.  6  he  asks.  How  could  the  unbelieving  exiles  be  in  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  Temple  and  hear  Jehovah's  voice  in  thunder  from  it? 
Vv.  7-14  he  takes  as  exilic,  based  on  an  Isai^nic  model, 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  459 

the  Temple  is  still  unbuilt,  but  the  building  would  seem 
to  be  already  begun."  This  latter  clause  should  be 
modified  to,  "  the  building  would  seem  to  be  in  imme- 
diate prospect."  The  rest  of  the  chapter,  vv.  6-24,  has 
features  that  speak  more  definitely  for  the  period  after 
the  Return  ;  but  even  they  are  not  conclusive,  and  their 
effect  is  counterbalanced  by  some  other  verses.  Ver.  6 
may  imply  that  the  Temple  is  rebuilt,  and  ver.  20  that 
the  sacrifices  are  resumed;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
these  verses  may  be,  like  parts  of  ch.  Ix.,  statements  of 
the  prophet's  vivid  vision  of  the  future.*  Vv.  7  and  8 
seem  to  describe  a  repeopling  of  Jerusalem  that  has 
already  taken  place ;  but  ver.  9  says,  that  while  the 
bringing  to  the  birth  has  already  happened,  which  is, 
as  we  must  suppose,  the  deliverance  from  Babylon, 
— or  is  it  the  actual  arrival  at  Jerusalem? — the 
bringing  forth  from  the  womb,  that  is,  the  complete 
restoration  of  the  people,  has  still  to  take  place.  Ver. 
13  is  certainly  addressjed  to  those  who  are  not  yet 
in  Jerusalem. 

These  few  points  reveal  how  difficult,  nay,  how  im- 
possible, it  is  to  decide  the  question  of  date,  as  between 
the  days  immediately  before  the  Return  and  the  days 
immediately  after.  To  the  present  expositor  the  balance 
of  evidence  seems  to  be  with  the  later  date.  But  the 
difference  is  very  small.  We  are  at  least  sure — and  it 
is  really  all  that  we  require  to  know — that  the  rebuild- 
ing of  Jerusalem  is  very  near,  nearer  than  it  has  been 
felt  in  any  previous  chapter.  The  Temple  is,  so  to 
speak,  within  sight,  and  the  prophet  is  able,  to  talk  of 
the  regular  round  of  sacrifices  and  sacred  festivals 
almost  as  if  they  had  been  resumed. 

*  So  Dillmann  and  Driver ;  Cheyne  is  doubtful. 


46o  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

To  the  people,  then,  either  in  the  near  prospect  of 
Return,  or  immediately  after  some  of  them  had  arrived 
in  Jerusalem,  the  prophet  addresses  a  number  of  oracles, 
in  which  he  pursues  the  division,  that  ch.  Ixv.  had 
emphasized,  between  the  two  parties  in  Israel.  These 
oracles  are  so  intricate,  that  we  are  compelled  to  take 
up  the  chapter  verse  by  verse.  The  first  of  them  begins 
by  correcting  certain  false  feelings  in  Israel,  excited 
by  former  promises  of  the  rebuilding  and  the  glory 
of  the  Temple.  Thus  saith  Jehovah,  The  heavens  are 
My  throne,  and  earth  is  My  footstool :  what  is  this  for  a 
house  that  ye  will  build — or,  are  building — Me,  and  what 
is  this  for  a  place  for  My  rest?  Yea,  all  these  things — 
that  is,  all  the  visible  works  of  God  in  heaven  and  earth 
— My  hand  hath  made,  and  so  came  to  pass  all  these 
things,  saith  Jehovah.  But  unto  this  will  I  look,  unto 
the  humble  and  contrite  in  spirit,  and  that  trembleth  at  My 
word.  These  verses  do  not  run  counter  to,  or  even  go 
beyond,  anything  that  our  prophet  has  already  said. 
They  do  not  condemn  the  building  of  the  Temple  :  this 
was  not  possible  for  a  prophecy  which  contains  ch.  Ix. 
They  condemn  only  the  kind  of  temple  which  those 
whom  they  address  had  in  view, — a  shrine  to  which  the 
presence  of  Jehovah  was  limited,  and  on  the  raising  and 
maintenance  of  which  the  religion  and  righteousness  of 
the  people  should  depend.  While  the  former  Temple 
was  standing,  the  mass  of  the  people  had  thus  mis- 
conceived it,  imagining  that  it  was  enough  for  national 
religion  to  have  such  a  structure  standing  and  honoured 
in  their  midst.  And  now,  before  it  is  built  again,  the 
exiles  are  cherishing  about  it  the  same  formal  and 
materialistic  thoughts.  Therefore  the  prophet  rebukes 
them,  as  his  predecessors  had  rebuked  their  fathers, 
and  reminds  them  of  a  truth  he  has  already  uttered, 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  461 

that  though  the  Temple  is  raised,  according  to  God's 
own  promise  and  direction,  it  will  not  be  to  its  struc- 
ture, as  they  conceive  of  it,  that  He  will  have  respect, 
but  to  the  existence  among  them  of  humble  and  sincere 
personal  piety.  The  Temple  is  to  be  raised  :  the  place 
of  His  feet  God  will  make  glorious ^  and  men  shall  gather 
round  it  from  the  whole  earth,  for  instruction,  for 
comfort  and  for  rejoicing.  But  let  them  not  think  it 
to  be  indispensable  either  to  God  or  to  man, — not  to 
God,  who  has  heaven  for  His  throne  and  earth  for  His 
footstool ;  nor  to  man,  for  God  looks  direct  to  man, 
if  only  man  be  humble,  penitent  and  sensitive  to  His 
word.  These  verses,  then,  do  not  go  beyond  the  Old 
Testament  limit ;  they  leave  the  Temple  standing,  but 
they  say  so  much  about  God's  other  sanctuary  man, 
that  when  His  use  for  the  Temple  shall  be  past.  His 
servant  Stephen  *  shall  be  able  to  employ  these  words 
to  prove  why  it  should  disappear. 

The  next  verse  is  extremely  difficult.  Here  it  is 
literally  :  A  slaughterer  of  the  oXy  a  slayer  of  a  man; 
a  sacrificer  of  the  lamb,  a  breaker  of  a  dog's  neck ;  an 
offerer  of  meat-offering,  swine^s  blood ;  the  maker  of 
a  memorial  offering  of  incense,  one  that  blesseth  an  idol, 
or  vanity.  Four  legal  sacrificial  acts  are  here  coupled 
with  four  unlawful  sacrifices  to  idols.  Does  this  mean 
that  in  the  eye  of  God,  impatient  even  of  the  ritual  He 
has  consecrated,  when  performed  by  men  who  do  not 
tremble  at  His  word,  each  of  these  lawful  sacrifices 
is  as  worthless  and  odious  as  the  idolatrous  practice 
associated  with  it, — the  slaughter  of  the  ox  as  the 
offering  of  a  human  sacrifice,  and  so  forth  ?  Or  does 
the  verse  mean  that  there  are  persons  in  Israel  who 

*  Acts  vii.  49. 


462  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

combine,  like  the  Corinthians  blamed  by  Paul,*  both 
the  true  and  the  idolatrous  ritual,  both  the  table  of  the 
Lord  and  the  table  of  devils  ?  Our  answer  will  depend 
on  whether  we  take  the  four  parallels  with  ver.  2,  which 
precedes  them,  or  with  the  rest  of  ver.  3,  to  which  they 
belong,  and  ver.  4.  If  we  take  them  with  ver.  2,  then 
we  must  adopt  the  first,  the  alternative  meaning  ;  if 
with  ver.  4,  then  the  second  of  these  meanings  is  the 
right  one.  Now  there  is  no  grammatical  connection, 
nor  any  transparent  logical  one,  between  vv.  2  and  3, 
but  there  is  a  grammatical  connection  with  the  rest 
of  ver.  3.  Immediately  after  the  pairs  of  lawful  and 
unlawful  sacrificial  acts,  ver.  3  continues,  yea,  they  have 
chosen  their  own  ways,  and  their  soul  delighteth  in  their 
abominations.  That  surely  signifies  that  the  unlawful 
sacrifices  in  ver.  3  are  things  already  committed  and 
delighted  in,  and  the  meaning  of  putting  them  in 
parallel  to  the  lawful  sacrifices  of  Jehovah's  religion  is 
either  that  Israelites  have  committed  them  instead  of 
the  lawful  sacrifices,  or  along  with  these.  In  this  case, 
vv.  3,  4  form  a  separate  discourse  by  themselves,  with 
no  relation  to  the  equally  distinct  oracle  in  vv.  i  and  2. 
The  subject  of  vv.  3  to  4  is,  therefore,  the  idolatrous 
Israelites.  They  are  delivered  unto  Satan,  their  choice ; 
they  shall  have  no  part  in  the  coming  Salvation.  In 
ver.  5  the  faithful  in  Israel,  who  have  obeyed  God's 
word  by  the  prophet,  are  comforted  under  the  mocking 
of  their  brethren,  who  shall  certainly  be  put  to  shame. 
Already  the  prophet  hears  the  preparation  of  the  judge- 
ment against  them  (ver.  6).  It  comes  forth  from  the 
city  where  they  had  mockingly  cried  for  God's  glory 
to  appear.     The  mocked  city  avenges  itself  on  them. 

*  I  Cor.  X, 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  463 

Harkj  a  roar  from  the  City  !  Hark,  from  the  Temple  / 
Hark,  Jehovah  accomplishing  vengeance  on  His  enemies  ! 
A  new  section  begins  with  ver.  7,  and  celebrates  to 
ver.  9  the  sudden  re-population  of  the  City  by  her 
children,  either  as  already  a  fact,  or,  more  probably, 
as  a  near  certainty.  Then  comes  a  call  to  the  children, 
restored,  or  about  to  be  restored,  to  congratulate  their 
mother  and  to  enjoy  her.  The  prophet  rewakens  the 
figure,  that  is  ever  nearest  his  heart,  of  motherhood, — 
children  suckled,  borne  and  cradled  in  the  lap  of  their 
mother  fill  all  his  view ;  nay,  finer  still,  the  grown 
man  coming  back  with  wounds  and  weariness  upon 
him  to  be  comforted  of  his  mother.  As  a  man  whom 
his  mother  comforteth,  so  will  I  comfort  you,  and  ye  shall 
be  comforted  in  Jerusalem.  And  ye  shall  see,  and  rejoice 
shall  your  heart,  and  your  bones  shall  flourish  like  the 
tender  grass.  But  this  great  light  shines  not  to  flood 
all  Israel  in  one,  but  to  cleave  the  nation  in  two,  like  a 
sword  of  judgement.  The  hand  of  Jehovah  shall  be 
known  towards  His  servants,  but  He  will  have  indigna- 
tion against  His  enemies, — enemies,  that  is,  within 
Israel.  Then  comes  the  fiery  judgement,  For  by  fire  will 
Jehovah  plead,  and  by  His  sword  with  all  flesh;  and  the 
slain  of  Jehovah  shall  be  many.  Why  there  should 
be  slain  of  Jehovah  within  Israel  is  then  explained. 
Within  Israel  there  are  idolaters  :  they  that  consecrate 
themselves  and  practise  purification  for  the  gardens,  after 
one   in  the   middle ;  *  eaters   of  swine^s  flesh,    and  the 

*  So,  in  literal  translation  of  the  text,  the  One  being  a  master  of  cere- 
monies, who,  standing  in  the  middle,  was  imitated  by  the  worshippers 
{cf.  Baudissin,  Shidien  ziir  Setnitischen  Religions-geschichie,  i.,  p.  315, 
who  combats  Lagarde's  and  Selden's  view,  that  TflN,  one,  stands  for 
the  God  Hadad).  The  Massoretes  read  the  feminine  form  of  one, 
which  might  mean  some  goddess. 


464  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

Abomination,  and  the  Mouse.  They  shall  come  to  an  end 
together,  saith  Jehovah,  for  I  know,  or  will  punish,*  their 
works  and  their  thoughts.  In  this  eighteenth  verse  the 
punctuation  is  uncertain,  and  probably  the  text  is  cor- 
rupt. The  first  part  of  the  verse  should  evidently  go, 
as  above,  with  ver.  17.     Then  begins  a  new  subject. 

//  is  coming  to  gather  all  the  nations  and  the  tongues, 
and  they  shall  come  and  shall  see  My  glory ;  and  I  will 
set  among  them  a  sign, — a  marvellous  and  mighty  act, 
probably  of  judgement,  for  he  immediately  speaks  of 
their  survivors, — and  I  will  send  the  escaped  of  them 
to  the  nations  Taishish,  Put  f  and  Lud,  drawers  of  the 
bow,  to  Tubal  and  Javan, — that  is,  to  far  Spain,  and 
the  distances  of  Africa,  towards  the  Black  Sea  and  to 
Greece,  a  full  round  of  the  compass, — the  isles  far  off 
that  have  not  heard  report  of  Me,  nor  have  seen  My  glory  ; 
and  they  shall  recount  My  glory  among  the  nations.  And 
they  shall  bring  all  your  brethren  from  among  all  the 
nations  an  offering  to  Jehovah,  on  horses  and  in  chariots 
and  in  litters,  and  on  mules  and  on  dromedaries,  up  on 
the  Mount  of  My  Holiness,  Jerusalem,  saith  Jehovah,  just 
as  when  the  children  of  Israel  bring  the  offering  in  a  clean 
vessel  to  the  house  of  Jehovah.  And  also  from  them  will 
I  take  to  be  priests,  to  be  Levites,  saith  Jehovah.  For  like 
as  the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth  which  I  am  making 
shall  be  standing  before  Me,  saith  Jehovah,  so  shall  stand 
your  seed  and  your  name.     But  again   the  prophecy 


*  Know,  Pesh.  and  some  editions  of  the  LXX. ;  punish,  Delitzsch 
and  Cheyne. 

*  The  Hebrew  text  has  Pul,  the  LXX.  Put.  Put  and  Lud  occur 
together,  Ezek.  xxvii.  lo-xxx.  5.  Put  is  Punt,  the  Egyptian  name 
for  East  Africa.  Lud  is  not  Lydia,  but  a  North  African  nation. 
Jeremiah,  xlvi.  9,  mentions,  along  with  Cush,  Put  and  the  Ludim  in 
the  service  of  Egypt,  and  the  Ludim  as  famous  with  the  bow. 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMEN   .  465 

swerves  from  the  universal  hope  into  which  we  expect  it 
to  break,  and  gives  us  instead  a  division  and  a  judge- 
ment :  the  servants  of  Jehovah  on  one  side  occupied 
in  what  the  prophet  regards  as  the  ideal  life,  regular 
worship — so  little  did  he  mean  ver.  i  to  be  a  condemna- 
tion of  the  Temple  and  its  ritual  ! — and  on  the  other 
the  rebels'  unburied  carcases  gnawed  by  the  worm  and 
by  fire,  an  abomination  to  all.  And  it  shall  come  to 
pass  from  n^w  moon  to  new  moon,  and  from  sabbath  to 
sabbath,  all  flesh  shall  come  to  worship  before  Me,  saith 
Jehovah:  and  they  shall  go  out  and  look  on  the  carcases 
of  the  men  who  have  rebelled  against  Me;  for  their  worm 
dieth  not,  and  their  fire  is  not  quenched,  and  they  shall  be 
an  abhorrence  to  all  flesh. 

We  have  thus  gone  step  by  step  through  the  chapter, 
because  its  intricacies  and  sudden  changes  were  not 
otherwise  to  be  mastered.  What  exactly  it  is  composed 
of  must,  we  fear,  still  remain  a  problem.  Who  can  tell 
whether  its  short,  broken  pieces  are  all  originally  from 
our  prophet's  hanjd,  or  were  gathered  by  him  from 
others,  or  were  the  fragments  of  his  teaching  which  the 
reverent  hands  of  disciples  picked  carefully  up  that 
nothing  might  be  lost  ?  Sometimes  we  think  it  must  be 
this  last  alternative  that  happened ;  for  it  seems  impos- 
sible that  pieces  so  strange  to  each  other,  so  loosely 
connected,  could  have  flowed  from  one  mind  at  one 
time.  But  then  again  we  think  otherwise,  when  we 
see  how  the  chapter  as  a  whole  continues  the  separa- 
tion made  evident  in  ch.  Ixv.,  and  runs  it  on  to  a  last 
emphatic  contrast. 


So  we  are  left  by  the  prophecy, — not  with  the  new 
heavens  and   the    new   earth   which  it  promised :   not 
VOL.  iL  30 


466  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH. 

with  the  holy  mountain  on  which  none  shall  hurt  nor 
destroy,  saith  the  Lord ;  not  with  a  Jerusalem  full  of 
glory  and  a  people  all  holy,  the  centre  of  a  gathered 
humanity, — but  with  the  city  like  to  a  judgement  floor, 
and  upon  its  narrow  surface  a  people  divided  between 
worship  and  a  horrible  woe. 

O  Jerusalem,  City  of  the  Lord,  Mother  eagerly  desired 
of  her  children,  radiant  light  to  them  that  sit  in  dark- 
ness and  are  far  oft,  home  after  exile,  haven  after 
storm, — expected  as  the  Lord's  garner,  thou  art  still 
to  be  only  His  threshing-floor,  and  heaven  and  hell 
as  of  old  shall,  from  new  moon  to  new  moon,  through 
the  revolving  years,  lie  side  by  side  within  thy  narrow 
walls !  For  from  the  day  that  Araunah  the  Jebusite 
threshed  out  his  sheaves  upon  thy  high  windswept 
rock,  to  the  day  when  the  Son  of  Man  standing  over 
against  thee  divided  in  His  last  discourse  the  sheep 
from  the  goats,  the  wise  from  the  foolish,  and  the 
loving  from  the  selfish,  thou  hast  been  appointed  of 
God  for  trial  and  separation  and  judgement. 

It  is  a  terrible  ending  to  such  a  prophecy  as  ours. 
But  is  any  other  possible?  We  ask  how  can  this 
contiguity  of  heaven  and  hell  be  within  the  Lord's  own 
city,  after  all  His  yearning  and  jealousy  for  her,  after 
His  fierce  agony  and  strife  with  her  enemies,  after  so 
clear  a  revelation  of  Himself,  so  long  a  providence,  so 
glorious  a  deHverance  ?  Yet,  it  is  plain  that  nothing 
else  can  result,  if  the  men  on  whose  ears  the  great  pro- 
phecy had  fallen,  with  all  its  music  and  all  its  gospel, 
and  who  had  been  partakers  of  the  Lord's  Deliverance, 
did  yet  continue  to  prefer  their  idols,  their  swine's 
flesh,  their  mouse,  their  broth  of  abominable  things, 
their  sitting  in  graves,  to  so  evident  a  God  and  to  so 
great  a  grace. 


Ixiii.  7-lxvi.]  A  LAST  INTERCESSION  AND  JUDGEMENT.  467 

It  is  a  terrible  ending,  but  it  is  the  same  as  upon 
the  same  floor  Christ  set  to  His  teaching, — the  gospel 
net  cast  wide,  but  only  to  draw  in  both  good  and 
bad  upon  a  beach  of  judgement ;  the  wedding  feast 
thrown  open  and  men  compelled  to  come  in,  but  among 
them  a  heart  whom  grace  so  great  could  not  awe  even 
to  decency;  Christ's  Gospel  preached.  His  Example 
evident,  and  Himself  owned  as  Lord,  and  nevertheless 
some  whom,  neither  the  hearing  nor  the  seeing  nor  the 
owning  wiih  their  lips  did  lift  to  unselfishness  or  stir 
to  pity.  Therefore  He  who  had  cried.  Come  all  unto 
Mcy  was  compelled  to  close  by  saying  to  many,  Depart. 

It  is  a  terrible  ending,  but  one  only  too  conceiv- 
able. For  though  God  is  love,  man  is  free, — free  to 
turn  from  that  love ;  free  to  be  as  though  he  had  never 
felt  it;  free  to  put  away  from  himself  the  highest, 
clearest,  most  urgent  grace  that  God  can  show.  But 
to  do  this  is  the  judgement. 

Lord^  are  there  Jew  that  he  saved  ?  The  Lord  did  not 
answer  the  question  but  by  bidding  the  questioner  take 
heed  to  himself :  Strive  to  enter  in  at  the  strait  gate. 


Almighty  and  most  merciful  God,  who  hast  sent  this 
book  to  be  the  revelation  of  Thy  great  love  to  man, 
and  of  Thy  power  and  will  to  save  him,  grant  that  our 
study  of  it  may  not  have  been  in  vain  by  the  callous- 
ness or  carelessness  of  our  hearts,  but  that  by  it  we 
may  be  confirmed  in  penitence,  lifted  to  hope,  made 
strong  for  service,  and  above  all  filled  with  the  true 
knowledge  of  Thee  and  of  Thy  Son  Jesus  Christ. 
Amen. 


INDEX    TO    CHAPS.    XL.— LXVI. 


The  Arabic  numerals  on  the  right-hand  column  rejer  to  the  pages,  the 
Roman  to  the  chapters  of  the  volume. 


xl.  I-II 
xl.  12-31 
xli.-xlv. 
xli.       . 
xli.  2    . 
xli.  8-20 
xli.  25  . 
xli.  26 
xlii.  1-7 
xlii.  8-17 
xlii.  18  ff. 
xlii.  22 
xlii.-xliii. 
xliii.-xlviii. 
xliii.  1-7 
xliii.  3,  4 
xliii.  8,  10 
xliii.  14 
xliii.  16-19 
xliii.  22-24 
xliii.  25 
Xliv.  1  flf. 
xliv.  7,  8 
xliv.  9-20 
xliv.  21 

xliv,  21,  22 

xliv.  24-28 
xlv.  1-13 
xlv.  8  . 
xlv.  13 


67,  V. 
VI. 

9 

VII. 

164  f. 

244  f.,  256 

12,  113,  130  f.,  145 

225 

261  f.,  XVIII. 
VIII. 

262  f. 

59 

XV. 

IX. 

257 

246 

158  f.,  263 
147, 246 

158 
156 
157 

256 

158 
153  f. 

256 

157 

160,  X. 
X. 

228 

224 


470 


INDEX   TO   CHAPS.   XL.—LXVI. 


xlv.  1 8 
xlv.  19 
xlv.  19-25 
xlvi.     . 
xlvi.  II 
xlvi.  13 
xlvii. 
xlvii.  6 
xlviii. 
xlviii.  18 
xlviii.  22 
xlix.  1-9 
xlix.  9-26 
1.  1-3   . 
1.4-1 1 
li.-lii.  12 
li.  5      . 
Hi.  7     . 
Hi.  13-Hii. 
liv.-lvi.  8 
liv.       . 
Iv. 
Ivi. 
Ivi. 
Ivi. 
Ivi. 
Iviii. 
Iviii. 
lix.      . 
lix.  4  . 
Ix.-lxiii.  7 
Ix.        . 
Ixi.,  Ixii. 
Ixi.       . 
Ixi.  II 
Ixiii.  2 
Ixiii.  1-6 
Ixiii.  7-Ix\- 
Ixiii.  7-1:;-;  ^ 
Ixiv.  5 
Ixv. 
Ixvi.     . 


1-8 
I  . 

9-lix. 
9-lvii. 


227 

159,  224 

225  f. 

XI. 

168 

228 

XII. 

59 

XIII. 

221 

17 

240  f.,  2645.,  XIX.,  381. 

XXI. 

XXI. 

XIX. 

XXI. 

228 
50 

18,  267,  XX. 
XXII. 

397 

402 

406 

222,  229 

18  f.,  XXIII. 

409 
61,  414 

222 

423 

222 

19,  XXIV. 

429 

435 

10,  228 

220 

220 

441 

I9f.,  XXV. 

446 

222 

455 

458 


INDEX   OF   SUBJECTS. 

(The  Arabic  numerals  refer  to  pages,  the  Roman  to  chapters.) 


Anshan  or  Anzan,  1 12  f. 

Babylon,  55  ff.;  capture  of,  146  f. ; 
xii. ;  compared  with  Rome, 
189,  199  f. ;  meaning  of  its 
name,  19 1 ;  its  pride,  191  ; 
early  history,  192  n. ;  cruelty, 
201 ;  yielding  to  Cyrus,  193  ; 
religion,  193;  in  the  modern 
world,  200  ft'.;  ruin,  199,  204; 
call  to  leave,  21 1,  396. 

Babylonia,  described,  53 ;  history 
of,  107  ft".,  146  t. 

Baudissin,  463. 

Belshazzar,  113. 

Bredenkamp  argues  for  "Isaianic" 
elements  in  Isa.  xl.-lxvi., 
24,  205,  211. 

Briggs,     Prof,     theory     of     two 
different      writings    in     Isa. 
xl.-lxvi.,      18,   315,    336,     cf    I 
234.  ! 

Calvin,  testimony  to  exilic  author-    I 
ship  of  Isa.  xl.-lxvi.,    14  f. ;    ' 
fair     exegesis,     215;     Com- 
mentary, Introduction. 

Captivity.     See  Exile. 

Chaldea.  See  Babylon.  Astro- 
logy, 193,  198. 


Cheyne,  Prof.,  19,  121,  211,  435. 

Croesus,  113;  and  the  oracles, 
114;  defeated  by  Cyrus, 
144  f . 

Cyropaedia,  164,  170. 

Cyrus,  alleged  mention  of  his 
name  by  Isaiah,  7;  not 
monotheist,  40,  165,  179; 
not  a  prediction  but  a  fulfil- 
ment, 9,  1 1  ;  66,  1 1 1  ff". ; 
Jehovah's  claim  on,  1 30, 
166,  144,  162  ff".;  capture  of 
Babylon,  146, 178;  Greek  pre- 
sentation of,  compared  with 
Hebrew,  164  f.,  169  ff".  As 
Messiah  :  Hebrew  objection 
to,  167  f,  175  ;  a  fulfilment  of 
prediction,  207  f.;  an  elect 
instrument,  -not  the  Servant, 
253- 

Davidson,  Prof.  A.  B.,  quoted,  15, 
17,  306,  317.  See  also  Intro- 
duction, 121. 

Delitzsch,  121,  211,  etc. 

Dillmann,  435,  etc. 

Driver,  Prof,  Isaiah  :  His  Life  and 
Times,  14,  18,  1 2 1,  435,  etc. 

Ewald,  121,  269,  336,  etc. 


472 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS. 


Exile,  the  Babylonian,  reason  of, 
28  ff. ;  What  Israel  took  into 
Exile,  iii.;  Israel  in  Exile,  iv. ; 
the  first  deportation,  num- 
ber, and  quality  of  exiles, 
32  ff. ;  second  deportation,  35 ; 
march  to  Babylon,  48  f  ;  con- 
dition of  the  exiles,  55  ff.; 
social  condition  of  exiles, 
57  ff.  ;  literary  efforts,  59  f. ; 
religious  life,  61  ;  commerce, 
62  ;  spiritual  experience,  63  ; 
traces  of  exile  in  Jewish 
literature,  63 ;  condition  of 
Israel  at  end  of  exile,  66. 

Ezekiel,  compared  with  Jeremiah, 
34,  46  ;  picture  of  captivity, 
59  ;  sin-bearer,  352;  and  the 
Messiah,  404. 

Face  of  God,  450  n. 
Fasts  in  the  exile,  61,  415. 
Fatherhood  of  God,  453  ff. 

Giesebrecht,  210. 

God  and  history,  87  f.,  100,  106  ff., 

157  ff. 

God  and  the  idols,  vi.,  ix.  (espe- 
cially 153). 

God,  His  Omnipotence  and-  Faith- 
fulness, 121  ff.,  390. 

God  the  Saviour,  136;  Personality 
of,  148  f. ;  Passion  of  God, 
viii. ;  spirituality  of  Jewish 
conception,  137. 

Gospel,  or  Good  News.  Meaning 
in  the  Exile,  437  f. ;  develop- 
ment from  then,  439  f. 

Grace,  proclamation  of,  charac- 
teristic of  "  Second  Isaiah," 
78  f. ;  to  fulfil  service,  290. 

Herodotus,  quotation  from,  Ii4f. 


Hahn,  121. 

Idolatry,  91, 94ff.,  116, 152  ff.,  1771?. 

Incarnation,  true  O.  T.  prophecies 
of,  135  ff.,  141. 

Individualism,  41  ff. 

Isaiah,  the  Prophet :  his  pro- 
phecies of  exile,  23,  29  f. ;  his 
connection  with  chs.  xl.-lxvi., 
23,  24;  are  there  fragments 
by  him  in  ch.  xl.-lxvi.  ?  24 ; 
his  use  of  the  word  Right- 
eousness, 216,  218. 

Isaiah,  Book  of :  plurality  of 
authors  in,  4;  on  its  own  testi- 
mony composite  book,  4f. 

Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.  :  their  date,  i. ;  do 
not  claim  to  be  by  Isaiah,  5 ; 
New  Testament  quotations 
from,  6 ;  speak  of  exile  and 
Cyrus  as  actual  facts,  8,  9; 
use  Cyrus  as  a  fulfilment  of 
previous  prophecies,  11,  12; 
local  colour,  13  ;  language 
and  style,  15;  characteristic 
doctrine,  16;  unity,  18  f.,  21, 
212,  222,  234,  314  f.,  336  fif., 
409,441,  446;  Palestinian  and 
pre-exihc  elements,  18-20, 
409  ff. ;  post-exilic  elements, 
18,  414,  458,  465. 

Isaiah  xl.-lxvi. :  the  double  pro- 
blem of  the  prophecy,  Intro- 
duction, 377,  378. 

"  Isles,"  or  coast-lands,  109  ff. 

Israel :  sketch  of  history  from 
Isaiah  to  exile,  ii.,  iii.,  iv. ; 
uniqueness  ;  reason  of  elec- 
tion by  God,  XV. ;  missionary 
career,  44  f. ;  prominence  given 
to,  236  ;  elected  for  service, 
237  ;  qualities  of  nation,  240 
ff. ;  Jesus  a  Jew,  249  f. 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS. 


473 


Jeremiah,  his  prediction  of  exile, 
8,  27,  66,  79;  teaching  on 
this  contrasted  with  Isaiah's, 
27 ;  Jeremiah's  significance 
for  "Second  Isaiah,"  and  fore- 
shadowing of  the  Servant  of 
the  Lord,  as  suffering  for  the 
people,  42,  275,  277  ;  and  for 
God's  Word,  330 ;  and  as 
sin-bearer,  352,  358;  cf.  also 
326,  435  n. 

Jerusalem  or  Zion,  fall  of,  30  ff. ; 
religious  significance  of  its 
destruction,  43  fl'. ;  the  exiles 
take  the  city's  name  to  them- 
selves, 47,  72 ;  personification 
of  Israel  undername  of  Zion, 
382  fF. ;  her  restoration,  395, 
xxiv.  ;  the  Bride  of  God, 
397  flf. ;  City  of  Judgement, 
466. 

Jesus  Christ,  and  the  Passion  of 
God,  viii. ;  a  Jew,  249 ;  His 
testimony  as  to  His  unique- 
ness, 283,  369  f. ;  His  example 
of  service,  284,  285,  305  ff.  ; 
called  the  Servant  of  the 
Lord  in  the  Acts,  286;  so 
recognised  by  Peter  and  Paul, 
287 ;  God's  will  first  with  Him, 
298 ;  martyrs  for  the  Word  of 
God,  285,  331 ;  and  the  Fifty- 
third  of  Isaiah,  366  ff.  ;  as 
bringer  of  good  news,  439. 

John  the  Baptist  and  the  Book 
of  Isaiah,  282  f^ 

Josiah,  King,  30. 

Kruger,  435,  442. 

Love  of  God,  76  f.,  viii.,  399  f., 
451  f. ;  sin  against  it,  467. 

Marriage,     figure      of     religious 


marriage  use  among  the  Sem- 
ites, 398  ff.  ;  purified  and  ex- 
alted in  the  Old  Testament, 
400;  a  test  of  the  uniqueness 
of  Hebrew  prophecy,  398  f., 
cf.  76  f. 

Media,  107. 

Mesopotamia,  51  ff. 

Monotheism,  88 ;  and  the  imagi- 
nation, 95  ff. ;  of  Israel  de- 
fined, 36  ff.,  129,  149  ff. 

Nabunahid  or  Nabonidos,  King 
of  Babylon,  65,  113,  193. 

Nebuchadrezzar,  32,  34,  54,  107. 

New  Testament  quotations  from 
Isaiah  xl.-lxvi.,  p.  6  and 
references,  282,  284  f.,  xvii. 

Persia,  iii. 

Pfleiderer,  quoted,  127. 

Positivism  and  the  service  of 
man,  294. 

Prediction,  Jehovah's  claim  to, 
120  ff,,  208;  the  ri'shonoth, 
206 ;  new  things,  206. 

Prophecy,  in  the  Exile,  its 
anonymousness,  61  ;  and  ap- 
peal to  former  scriptures,  62 , 
precedes  history  as  well  as 
interprets  it,  100 ;  unique- 
ness of  Hebrew  prophecy; 
248,  ff.,  xix.,  321  ff.;  and 
martyrdom,  328. 

Redemption  of  Israel.  Political^ 
fulfilled  by  Cyrus,  271  ;  spi- 
ritual, fulfilled  by  Servant, 
271,  273. 

Renan,  "Natural  Monotheism  of 
the  Semites,"  149. 

Return  from  exile,  promise  of 
46;  facts  of,  57;  call  to^ 
211  ff.,  396,  405,  etc. 


474 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS. 


Revelation,    conditions     of,    73; 

method  of,  100  f,  148  f.     See 

Prophecy. 
Righteousness,   127  f.,  xiv.  ;    root 

and  growth  of  word,  215  f,  ; 

of  Israel,   217  ;   of  Jehovah, 

224,  cf.  365,  392,  410,  436  f. 

Sabbath,  61,  422. 

Sacramental  character  of  pro- 
phecy, 89  f. 

Sayce,  163,  165,  179,  457. 

Sin,  its  effects,  387  ;  its  punish- 
ment, 29,  465  ff. ;  grounds  of 
forgiveness,  79 ;  borne  by 
God,  viii.,  183,  by  Jeremiah 
and  Ezekiel,  352,  by  the 
Servant,  xx. 

Sinim,  land  of,  383. 

Socialism  and  the  service  ol  man, 
xviii. 

Suffering,  vicarious  :  Jeremiah 
422,  64 ;  of  the  Servant,  272 
U  331- 

The  Servant  of  Jehovah,  God's 
commission  of,  132  f. ;  Christ's 
relation  to,  142;  possibly 
speaker      summing       moral 


meaning  of  Exile,  210;  pas- 
sages on,  233  ;  his  character, 
254;  as  a  nation,  236  ff.,  256  f.; 
as  part  of  a  nation,  257  ff. ; 
as  realised  by  one  man — 
prophet  and  martyr,  276 ;  a 
person,  276,etc.;  a  personifica- 
tion, 266 ;  fulfilled  by  Christ, 
267,  281  ff.,  367;  an  indi- 
vidual, objections  answered 
to  recognising  this — 1st,  270, 
2nd,  272,  3rd,  274;    cf.  XX., 

405. 
The  Servant's  ofBce,  extended  by 

Paul,  287  f.;  by  Peter,  286  f. 
The  Servant's  chief  end,  317;  as 

prophet  and  martyr,  313  fF. ; 

as  sin-bearer,  xx. 

Voice,  the  human,  in  Isaiah 
xl.-lxvi.,  302,  416. 

Wellhausen,  238,  269,  457  n. 

Xenophanes,  the  Eleatic,  contem- 
porary of  "Second  Isaiah," 
125. 

Xenophon,  portrait  of  Cyrus, 
163  f. 


HEBREW  AND  GREEK  WORDS   SPECIALLY  TREATED. 

^m  and  ^2D,  179  ff,  343  352. 

r\\T\^  ini;,  255,  xvi. 


n>^«,  109 

pN  and  X^^^^i  262,  292,  298. 

Di;  nn3, 262. 

lEJ'n,  84,  85,  437ff. 

Di,  206. 
y>'bv  -im,  76. 

o'pt^'D,  263. 

isasj'D,  299. 
i:r,  384. 


pnV  and  r\\>1%  xiv.,  392. 

rh^y  168. 

Nip,  82. 

DK>n  Nip,  i3of.,  437fiF.- 

nij&^'N"!  and  nnnx,  121,  206. 
K^N-10, 117, 119. 

ZovKos  and  Trais,  286  n. 


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